A day after senior BJP leader and parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Murli Manohar Joshi was forced to issue a statement supporting his party’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe in the 2G scam, he continued to stir the pot of trouble.
Joshi met Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar for over 45 minutes on Friday, ostensibly to discuss Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s offer to appear before the PAC, an unprecedented situation for it.
The party on its part had hoped that after Thursday’ statement, Joshi would put a halt to the proceedings of the PAC, to build pressure on the government to constitute a JPC. It seems though that Joshi would have none of that. His proactive stance on the 2G spectrum case before the PAC appears to continue unabated.
?The PAC cannot call a minister. It can call officials, secretaries and individuals. But as I have made clear, the Prime Minister’s case is different as he has himself offered to appear. We will have to discuss the issue with the constitutional experts before taking a decision,” Joshi said after his meeting with the Speaker.
Asked about his statement expressing full commitment to demand for JPC ?as a member of the BJP?, even while pursuing PAC inquiry as its chairman, he maintained that there was no contradiction between the two, saying they were ?parallel agencies? which could work simultaneously.
His meeting with Speaker Meira Kumar becomes significant in the light of the fact that for any minister to appear before the PAC, prior permission has to be sought from the Speaker. Evidently, the Prime Minister’s offer is a constitutional connundrum, which the BJP would have much preferred to have been put on the backburner, but which Joshi seems eager to get to the bottom.