2G: Baalu asks Speaker to return 'incomplete' JPC report to chairman

Holding the Joint Parliamentary Committee report on the 2G scam as "incomplete", Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader and panel member T R Baalu has asked Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to return it to the chairman and direct him to re-submit it after including former Telecom Minister A Raja's written statement as part of his dissent note.

The DMK leader has also charged the JPC chairman with adopting a "partisan" role and said he has submitted a report that was "more political than parliamentarian in character".

Baalu, in a letter to the Speaker, has said the JPC on 2G was as per its terms of reference required "to examine irregularities and aberrations, if any, and the consequences thereof in the implementation of government decisions and policy prescriptions from 1998 to 2009".

"Consideration and discussion of the latter part of the terms of reference, i.e. the "consequences", is absent in the report. The report is thus incomplete and does not throw proper light on the matters it was supposed to deal with. Therefore, I humbly request you to return the report to the chairman and direct him to re-submit it after including the written statement of Mr Raja as part of my original note of dissent," Baalu said in his three-page letter to the Speaker.

The DMK leader, who was part of the committee, rued that certain portions of his dissent note, which was to be an integral part of the JPC report, were expunged by the Speaker.

Baalu also said that it is "disturbing" that apart from being excluded from the report, the written statement was not even properly put to discussion during any meeting of the JPC by the chairman. "The result is that the facts that Mr Raja has stated have not been properly considered by the JPC," he said.

He said despite such clear and unambiguous minutes of dissent, the chairman of the JPC has chosen to exclude the written statement of Raja, despite assurances that it would form a part of the final panel report.

"This assurance has clearly been breached. However, the chairman chose to exclude the written statement of Raja even in my note of dissent. This is improper and unfair, both to Raja and to me," he said.

"This is as good as saying that the truth will remain forever buried, rather than being made accessible to all," Baalu said on non-inclusion of Raja's statement in the final JPC report.

Image: Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar