Govt and Opp. trade telecom charges
The Lok Sabha on Thursday witnessed tu-tu, main-main between the leaders of the ruling Congress party and the main Opposition BJP during a discussion on the motion for appointment of a joint parliamentary committee to look into the allocation and pricing of telecom licenses and spectrum during 1998 to 2009.
While the leaders were seen holding the BJP-led NDA and the Congress-led UPA governments responsible for alleged irregularities, they also blamed the leaderships of the two parties for the impasse in Parliament on the setting up of a JPC to probe the telecom scam that led to the entire Winter Session being washed out last year.
While moving the motion, finance minister and Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee said lessons needed to be drawn by all concerned from the deadlock, suggesting it was dangerous for democracy that Parliament could not function till one conceded a particular demand. “Parliament cannot be mortgaged to the conceding of a demand,” he said, warning that if “hatred and disrespect for parliamentary institutions was generated, it would lead to the rise of extra-constitutional authorities”, as had happened in a neighbouring country in 1958 when martial law was imposed.
He also pointed out how the NDA had refused a JPC on the Tehelka expose and the then minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, had said that a group of MPs sitting in a JPC could not substitute discussion and debate on the floor of the House.
But Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj counter-attacked by reminding them of how Mr Mukherjee had dubbed the Opposition as “Maoists”. “Was our demand (for a JPC) violent or unconstitutional,” Ms Swaraj sought to know from Mr Mukherjee, referring to him at the same time as a very nice person who fails to distinguish proper from improper when he gets angry. She said that if the government had agreed to a JPC earlier, then the Supreme Court would not have asked for the Prime Minister’s affidavit or asked the CBI to show the chargesheet filed in the 2G spectrum allocation issue. Even the allies (Congress allies in the UPA) were in favour of a JPC, she pointed out.
She claimed the executive, legislature, judiciary and press have become shaky and the corporate sector is playing a role (in deciding who should be in the cabinet and what should be written in the press).
Telecom minister Kapil Sibal, seeking to justify his zero loss theory after a CAG report claimed that the “first come, first serve” policy adopted while granting 2G spectrum licences resulted in a presumptive loss of `1.76 lakh crore, intervened to say the UPA had only been following the NDA’s policy of “first come, first served”.
Mr Sibal’s attacked the BJP, especially on how the NDA had undermined the CAG during its rule. He also drew attention to how the BJP attacked constitutional authority, especially the then CEC, J.M. Lyngdoh.
At one point Mr Yashwant Sinha even asked the government to withdraw the motion for appointment of a joint committee.
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