Congress Party says PAC report irrelevant due to JPC, Joshi to consult experts

The Congress Party has asked the opposition party BJP to “let go” off the report by the Public Accounts Committee on the 2G scam.

Spokesperson Manish Tewari made the call on a day when a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee — the statutory Parliamentary body in charge of keeping a watch on government expenditure — ended in disarray over the re-submission of the report.

Tewari said that the PAC, whose validity is now over, should now take it easy as a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) has been formed to probe into the 2G scam.

“When there is a new committee which has been formed, why are they after this report, especially when it has been created after holding a gun to the head of democracy,” he said, referring to the considerably protests and arguments that had preceded the formation of the JPC.

PAC chairman Murlimanohar Joshi said that different members of the PAC raised various objections and arguments about whether or not the five draft reports of the last PAC can now be sent to the Parliament or not.

“We have therefore decided to consult constitutional experts before deciding on what to do,” Joshi said.

The report, bitterly opposed by the Congress and DMK members, has already been rejected by Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar pointing out that the PAC did not adopt the report. Indeed, the Congress and DMK members had successfully aborted the adoption of the report in the PAC.

The UPA had managed to swing the voting on the report in its favor thanks to support from SP and BSP.