Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Murli Manohar Joshi is yet to take a call on whether to submit the report on 2G scam to the Lok Sabha speaker, his colleague and member of the committee Yashwant Sinha said he was charging both the prime minister and home minister of ?direct complicity? in the matter.
Joshi spent the day at his office in Parliament, deliberating over the events of Thursday evening, when members of his committee elected another chairperson and rejected his draft report on the scam. Sources close to him said that Joshi ?was going into all the possible legal angles in the matter, before deciding whether or not to submit the report to the Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar.?
Sinha, on the other hand, aggressively attacked both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and home minister P Chidambaram. ?I am charging the Prime Minister with direct complicity in this matter. I am charging the former finance minister with direct complicity. They have not only not done their constitutional duty but willy-nilly they have become a party to this scam,? Sinha said.
?We are all hurt by the conduct of the members. This is perhaps the first time that a Parliamentary committee has behaved in this manner,? he said. In a scathing attack on Singh, the BJP leader alleged, ?there was complete abdication of responsibility by the Prime Minister. In India?s history there is no precedent of this kind. Nine out of ten decisions taken by (then telecom minister) A Raja were in the knowledge of the Prime Minister. Whether he calls it coalition dharma or this or that dharma.?
He went a step further and said, ?those who know the Prime Minister well, and I know him well, also know that he is not the kind who will able to leave his post,? he added. Asked about the fate of the PAC report on the issue, which had seen acrimonious scenes in yesterday?s meeting, Sinha said, ?it is entirely up to the PAC chairperson and the Lok Sabha speaker to take a final call on the issue.?
The counter point Sinha was made by minister of state for parliamentary affairs Ashwini Kumar. ?I think the chairman who is a seasoned politician should not have tried to push the political agenda of his party by misusing the office,? he said. He alleged that by seeking to ignore the reservations of a majority of PAC members, Joshi has ?betrayed an inclination to subserve the political agenda of his party rather than to uphold the dignity of the institution of the PAC.?
Maintaining that such report is not a report at all in the eyes of the law, he said, ?it is incorrect to suggest that the next committee of the PAC is precluded from hearing the matter afresh or to review the deliberations of the previous PAC.?