Obviously there must be something really big about a joint parliamentary committee (JPC), the way the nays and ayes have panned out. Despite a CAG report, a highly rigorous Supreme Court-monitored CBI investigation and the Justice Patil committee report, we are told, a JPC has to be it. So there will be a JPC and we have the Prime Minister?s word, no less.
Since a JPC is so significant, it follows whenever there have been critical episodes punctuating our progress as a nation, there would have been such committees. Checking up parliamentary records shows this is indeed the case. Many of them have addressed momentous issues for our times. Top of the list must be the JPC set up to examine no less than food management in the Parliament House Complex. There has also been an equally significant committee to maintain the heritage character and development of Parliament House complex, as late as 2009.
Commentators have often noted the only safety from inflation in food prices is to take refuge at the tables in the assorted canteens maintained by the Indian Railways in the complex. It follows that the JPC on food management in Parliament is, therefore, also an able substitute for an examination of the inflation question.
A small digression here. CV Madhukar, chief of PRS Legislative Research, informs me that there is a difference between a joint committee and a joint parliamentary committee. The Indian Constitution does not refer to a JPC and neither do the parliamentary rule books. While both comprise members from both houses, to be a JPC it has to be designated as such by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Else it remains a joint committee only. By that count, there are four JPCs that have been set up till date. The one on 2G scam will be the fifth.
It is also a distinction that not many legislators seem to think much about. The official Websites of a number of them list their membership of these ?joint parliamentary committees?.
What has been the record of the four JPCs that were set up? The first of these, on Bofors, was like the 2G scam, set up after a tremendous political demand. Before the committee could be formed, VP Singh had resigned from the Congress party and so the demand lost its steam. The committee was boycotted by the Opposition and that was the end of it.
Of the other three, two were set up as a fall-out of the huge upheaval in the stock markets in 1993 and in 2002. The strongest demand of the members of the second JPC on stock market scam was their report should not meet the same fate as the first one. So we can safely ignore the impact of the first one.
There was another JPC, almost as soon as the second JPC on stock market was winding up its work. This was a fall-out of the allegations of pesticide residues in cold drinks and therefore was tasked to devise safety standards for soft drinks, fruit juices and other beverages. Since the then NDA government was at the receiving end of a series of controversies, especially the stock scam, it perceived the pesticide storm as a possible stick to beat the sugar lobby (read Sharad Pawar) with. Predictably, the report said nothing spectacular to upset any industrial group, including even issues like water consumption by soft drink companies.
So, to decide if JPCs are particularly useful, the only standard we have is the second on the Ketan Parekh and UTI. In this respect, the committee did a good job. One of the things it brought successive governments to was tabling an action taken report on all the recommendations made in the final report. True, then too the big debate was if Prime Minister Vajpayee or even finance minister Yashwant Sinha will have to depose before it. Nothing of the sort happened. But as the committee continued with its work, the government hived off UTI?India?s then largest mutual fund?into UTIAMC and firewalled its bad investments into another entity. Also, for the first time the government was forced to make good some of the losses suffered by the investors in US-64, the flagship scheme of UTI.
subhomoy.bhattacharjee@expressindia.com
