The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the 2G spectrum scam, which met after a long gap of nearly eight weeks, signalled that the priority would be the reexamination of telecom policy in the NDA regime.
JPC chairman PC Chacko said at the meeting on Wednesday that the committee had taken up the departmental CAG report of the year 2000 for the financial year 1999 which showed that ?there was a huge loss to the exchecquer.?
?Migration charges and compensation packages to cellular operators have caused a huge loss to the exchecquer. We have asked the telecom secretary to quantify this loss, as the CAG report does not quantify it. It will be easy enough to do, as the difference between what cellular operators promised and delivered on can be calculated,? he said. He added that former attorney general Soli Sorabjee will be summoned by the JPC to depose on the matter. The committee was informed by telecom secretary Chandrashekhar that 281 license had been granted since 1994, details of which were also demanded by the committee.
Chacko added that the committee could not complete the agenda today and would be continuing with it tomorrow. The day was mostly taken up by technical depositions on spectrum. Ashok Chandra, who is wireless advisor to the department of telecom and TK Varadakrishnan, deputy advisor, both deposed before the committee in this regard.
When asked whether the JPC will summon the same witnesses as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and follow some of the conclusions in the report, chacko said, ?In my knowledge I do not know if any such PAC report exists and we are self sufficient as a committee.?
?I have requested all the members to give a list of whom they want as witnesses as I want this committee to be democratic,? he added. He denied that there was any political vendetta behind going after the erstwhile NDA regimes policies.
He added that former finance ministers in the NDA regime, Jaswant singh and YAshwant Sinha, would continue as members of the JPC, as would Congress MP Manish Tiwari who had submitted that the JPC could find a conflict of interest in his continuance as member since he had represented some telecom companies in the past in his capacity as a lawyer.