After doing the rounds of the CBI headquarters in Delhi, India Inc?s head honchos may soon make their way to Parliament House. Murli Manohar Joshi, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is going into the 2G spectrum scam, on Thursday met CBI director AP Singh, and it is believed that the 63 promoters/chief executive officers of telecom companies who were questioned by the CBI will now appear before the PAC.
A member of the PAC said, ?Whoever needs to be summoned will be summoned?. Already, journalists who had written about the shortcomings in the allocation of 2G spectrum and lobbyist Niira Radia have been summoned, as has Radia herself, and the PAC has also said that it wants to cross-examine officials from the Prime Minister?s Office (PMO) like principal secretary to the Prime Minister TKA Nair and Cabinet secretary KM Chandrashekhar.
The PAC’s anxiety in summoning as many people and as soon as possible also stems from the fact that the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the issue, with far more powers, has been constituted and will be holding its first meeting on March 24.
Joshi had tried to stymie the JPC that his party ? the principal opposition Bharatiya Janata Party ? was pushing for, saying that the PAC probe into the scam was sufficient, but had to toe the party line. ?Now it is a matter of honour that the PAC’s report come out soon and be a very comprehensive report one on the 2G scam,? said a member of the PAC.
It will also help reestablish the primacy of the PAC as the apex committee of all parliamentary committees,? said the PAC member. There are a host of probes into the 2G spectrum scam. There is the one by the CBI, which is also being monitored by the Supreme Court. A departmental committee under retired Justice Shivraj Patil has already gone into it. The sale and allocation of 2G spectrum had already been investigated by the Comptroller and Auditor General, whose report sparked off the whole controversy. Add to these the PAC and JPC inquiries. In this competitive probe, the traffic between India Inc and Parliament is set to rise.