Now that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has summoned Niira Radia in connection with its probe into the 2G spectrum scam, its chairman Murli Manohar Joshi has to take a call on whether the lobbyist?s questioning would be in the presence of NK Singh, a member of the committee. This is because Radia?s interview with the PAC is expected to go into details over what is now being referred to as the Radia tapes, in which Singh was featured.
There appears to be no immediate precedent to such a situation in any parliamentary committee, although sources say that in the standing committee on roads, three southern MPs owned companies on which departmental queries had been raised within a meeting.
Murli Manmohar Joshi himself appears in the dark over what to do about the situation. ?I will have to look into the matter. I don?t think there has been such a situation before; therefore, precedents are hard to cite,? he said.
A senior BJP leader who is a member of the PAC insisted that it was a ?highly irregular? situation and that NK Singh, a Rajya Sabha member, should recuse himself from the proceedings. Another member, who does not belong to either the UPA or NDA said that it was not such a serious problem. ?We need to go into the details of the transcript of the taped conversation. If it contains anything which is tied up with the 2G scam, then there is a problem,? he said.
There is no official word yet on when Radia?s hearing before the PAC will take place, which is why Murli Manohar Joshi too remained non-committal on the matter. Singh was unavailable for comment.
Today, journalist Gopikrishnan appeared before the PAC and described the sequence of events of news stories broken by him on the 2G spectrum scam.