After promising support to the United Progressive Alliance government over the 2G Spectrum controversy, Tirnamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee took the Congress by surprise when she joined the Opposition in their demand for a joint parliamentary committee on Monday.
India will benefit hugely if the representation of women in Parliament is increased to a just level.
"The Bhartiya Janata Party wants to use the Joint Parliamentary Committee as the political tool. It's the issue of ego. It's a political demand so the Congress is not agreeing to it," says Janardhan Dwivedi, chairman of media cell of the Congress, while talking exclusively to rediff.com about why Congress is not agreeing to a JPC to look into allegations related to the allotment of 2G spectrum.
Doubting the United Progressive Alliance government's intentions in conducting an impartial probe into the VVIP chopper deal, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday demanded that a special investigation team be set up to investigate the matter under a monitoring mechanism.
Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai on Monday appeared before the Joint Parliamentary Committee, which is probing the 2G spectrum scam, to explain how the government auditor quantified the losses in the spectrum allocation at Rs 1.76 lakh crore. Rai was asked to brief the Committee, chaired by Congress leader P C Chacko, on the allocation and pricing of telecom licences and spectrum during 1998 to 2009.
The grand old party is looking to retain power in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh while seeking to come to power in the other three states going to polls -- Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Mizoram.
Sources at the private hospital where Mitra was admitted to said he died due to heart and age-related ailments.
This is in contrast to a Supreme Court judgment of March which said the panel should comprise of the prime minister, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India.
Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan was named a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee into the 2G spectrum scam after her colleague Abhishek Singhvi recused himself taking the plea that he had appeared for cellular operators in the court as a senior advocate.
With the government moving a resolution in the Lok Sabha to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G spectrum issue, the battle lines between the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and the Bharatiya Janata Party have become more tightly drawn with the Congress preparing its ammunition to target the BJP during its National Democratic Alliance government, in a bid to expose the actions of their telecom ministers.
'The Bharat Jodo Yatra successfully resurrected the Rahul Gandhi brand.' 'There's a critical mass that has built up for the Congress and Mr Modi is feeling the heat on the Adani issue, the raids on the BBC offices, the Opposition getting together.'
It is thanks to the policy of liberalisation conceived by Manmohan Singh and enforced by P V Narasimha that the Indian economy has now become the world's 5th largest economy by nominal GDP, asserts Dr Sudhir Bisht.
The ruling BJP has issued a whip to its MPs, asking them to ensure their presence in the House.
Mahua asserted that despite all efforts by the Bharatiya Janata Party to "sound the death knell" for constitutional democracy, India is too great a country to be destroyed by the fascists.
21-member parliament panel would review the bill.
With the Parliament stalled for the 18th consecutive day on Tuesday over the demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee into the 2G spectrum scam, the Congress core committee met yet again on Tuesday evening to take stock of the situation both inside and outside Parliament.
The Congress said on Wednesday that Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad did not give any dissent note to the Women's Reservation Bill despite being a member of the Parliamentary Committee concerned, which went into the measure.
During the debate on the 'Motion of Thanks on the President's Address', Leader of the House Piyush Goyal and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman strongly objected to 'insinuations' against the prime minister, who was also present in the House.
Thakur will be part of the 21-member committee headed by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, according to a bulletin issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
Union ministers said Parliament passing over two dozen Bills was evidence of increased productivity of Narendra Modi government 2.0.
A meeting of Joint Parliamentary Committee examining 2G scam on Tuesday saw heated exchanges as Bharatiya Janata Party members demanded summoning of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and top PMO officials which was countered by Congress members with their own list of witnesses that included all National Democratic Alliance telecom ministers.
Proceedings in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were disrupted as Opposition members raised slogans demanding a discussion and a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the fraud-allegation-triggered rout.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the misuse of the Central Bureau of Investigation by the Congress led-United Progressive Alliance government.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi are expected to meet on Friday evening in the backdrop of opposition demand for a probe by a joint parliamentary committee into the Indian Premier League controversy.
Gandhi's remarks came after the Supreme Court gave clean chit to the Modi government on the purchase of 36 fully-loaded Rafale fighter jets from French company Dassault Aviation.
Farmers organisations and pro-Kannada organisations staged protests in Mysuru, Mandya, Bengaluru and other parts expressing their anger and urging the state government not to release water to Tamil Nadu.
Apparently seeking to pacify an angry BJP, Joint Parliamentary Committee chief P C Chacko on Tuesday dismissed reports that the panel has named former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in its draft report in the 2G scam.
"Whoever said all those words you mentioned, I did not respond in kind because it is not the way I am built and we now have to move on, let bygones be bygones, whatever was said, we need to forget and move forward. It is not about individuals or positions or someone's statements now. It is about the country and the party," Pilot said.
Leader of opposition Sonia Gandhi, deputy leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, Shivraj Patil, and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Vijay Kumar Malhotra and former minister Shanta Kumar may also be part of the committee.
A Joint Parliamentary Committee will probe the controversial chopper deal, with the government on Wednesday asserting that there will be "no cover up" as it was determined to go to the root of the scam and give maximum punishment to the guilty.
'The Speaker should have asked Ramesh Bidhuri to withdraw his words and apologise.'
The government has announced the formation of a joint parliamentary committee to probe the Rs 176,000 crore 2G scam. The JPC will comprise 20 members from Lok Sabha and ten members from Rajya Sabha.
The Parliamentary committee examining the cash-for-vote scam has no plans as of now to call Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh and Congress leader Ahmed Patel for questioning.
An united opposition on Thursday forced the adjourned of Parliament, as the opposition raised slogans for a joint parliamentary committee probe in the controversial allocation of 2G spectrum. As soon as the Lok Sabha assembled, opposition members from Bharatiya Janata Party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Shiv Sena and Samajwadi Party trooped into the well, waving photocopies of newspaper reports on alleged irregularities in the 2G spectrum Congress mem
A private member resolution seeking that the government implement the recommendations of the Sachar Committee report and other reports that have discussed the educational and social backwardness of Muslims and enact a legislation for the prevention of atrocities against minorities was moved in the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
Parliament proceedings were adjourned amid ruckus and sloganeering by the Opposition members over the Adani issue.
Sharmishtha, who has quit politics, also clarified that she has not tried to tweak her father's views about anyone.
Addressing a press conference, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said efforts are being made since the last few days that a 'formula' or middle path is found with both the Opposition and the government relenting.
Bharatiya Janata Party members on Tuesday walked out of the proceedings of a Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G scam, claiming that they were not allowed to raise the issue of finalising the list of witnesses.
On August 22 also, BJP members had walked out of the JPC meeting alleging that Congress members had used foul language when they sought inclusion of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the finalised list of witnesses to be called before the JPC.
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