On March 13, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary had tabled the second batch of supplementary demands for grants in the House amounting to a total of Rs 2,70,508.89 crore.
Former telecom minister A Raja on Monday wrote a strongly-worded letter to Joint Parliamentary Committee Chairman P C Chacko, slamming the draft report of the committee on the 2G scam.
Even as Bharatiya Janata Party MPs are boycotting the Joint Parliamentary Committee looking into the 2G spectrum scam, the panel's chairman P C Chacko has ruled out summoning of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
All opposition members of the parliamentary panel on the Waqf Amendment Bill were suspended for a day on Friday amid continuous protests and accusations against Chairman Jagdambika Pal of steam-rolling through the proceedings.
He was the financial secretary when the 2G licences were allocated.
Bharatiya Janata Party members on Wednesday walked out of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) meeting on the 2G scam, dubbing it as a 'kangaroo court' following differences on the issue of calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to depose before it.
Parliament's Public Accounts Committee chairperson M M Joshi on Thursday indicated that overlapping of functions of the panel and the Joint Parliamentary Committee into 2G spectrum scam was not a matter of concern and his powers went beyond the Comptroller and Auditor General report.
The United Progressive Alliance is seriously considering increasing the strength of the proposed Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on 2G scam from 21 to 30 members to accommodate more parties, but it is in no mood to expand its scope of the JPC to cover Commonwealth Games (CWG) fiasco, the Adarsh Society scam and the cancelled ISRO S-band spectrum sale.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee has found not a "single file or record" to show any culpability of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the 2G spectrum allocation, its chairman P C Chacko said justifying the clean chit to them in the draft report.
With the prime minister rejecting his demand for appearing before the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha has alleged that Manmohan Singh gained "cheap publicity" by announcing at the Congress conclave that he was ready to appear before the Public Accounts Committee when he did not intend to do so.
Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar held talks with leaders of the opposition in her attempt to break the Parliament impasse on the 2G spectrum issue.Leaders of several parties including the Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena, Akali Dal, Samajwadi Party, RJD and the National Conference did not attend the luncheon meeting called by the Speaker to find a solution to the deadlock.
Both factions of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (Arshad Madani and Mahmood Madani) slammed the Bill and expressed grave concerns over the proposed legislation.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday rejected the demand for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the 2G spectrum scam and hit out at the opposition, saying that the country will not forget and forgive them for the wastage of an entire session of Parliament.Turning down the Opposition demand for a JPC into the 2G spectrum issue, Gandhi said there was no need for a JPC when the Public Accounts Committee and the Central Bureau of Investigation were probing the case.
The standoff between the government and the Opposition over the issue of Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G spectrum, which led to the washing out of Parliamentary business in the entire winter session, could cast its shadow even on the budget session. And indication to this was given by Janata Dal-United chief Sharad Yadav on Saturday.
The stage is set for a direct contest between NDA nominee C P Radhakrishnan and joint opposition candidate B Sudershan Reddy for the September 9 vice-presidential election. Nominations have been scrutinized and accepted.
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said he will back any candidate announced by the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar as Maha Vikas Aghadi's chief ministerial face.
The Upper House was earlier adjourned twice in the afternoon session when it took up the discussion on the Budget after Prime Minister Narendra Modi finished his speech on the motion of thanks on the President's address and the motion was passed.
The Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray on Saturday said Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar not favouring formation of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe allegations against the Adani group will not lead to cracks in opposition unity.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad and Tarun Vijay on Friday rejected the government theory that the Central Bureau of Investigation raids on Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi, chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee is a natural culmination of unearthing the corruption in staging the gala Games.
Former telecom minister A Raja has urged Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to return the Joint Parliamentary Committee report on the 2G spectrum scandal and resubmit it with his written statement.
Though a first time Member of Parliament, All India Congress Committee spokesperson Manish Tewari has a long association of nearly 31 years with the Congress, since joining its youth wing in 1981. The 47-year-old leader was seen as a strong defence line of the Congress in the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party's onslaught.
Dissatisfied with the reply about non-submission of the controversial March 25 note on 2G spectrum allocation before the panel examining the issue, non-United Progressive Alliance members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Monday asked the finance ministry to provide input documents that helped its compilation.
The row over the 2G note on Tuesday resonated in the Joint Parliamentary Committee meeting with members alleging that facts were being suppressed, prompting the Committee to summon two top finance ministry officials besides demanding affidavits from government that all relevant documents have been given.
The turf war over 2G Scam inquiry has refused to die down with the Joint Parliamentary Committee planning to discuss on Thursday whether the Public Accounts Committee, chaired by senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi, has gone beyond its mandate.
With the 2G spectrum issue getting caught in a logjam in the Joint Parliamentary Committee, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday sought to bring the matter to the forefront of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee, saying the matter is pending and should be disposed of.
Senior Congress member P C Chacko was on Friday made the chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G spectrum issue, setting in motion the probe into what the opposition is alleging as the biggest scam in independent India.
Dr Murali Manohar Joshi, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has said that the constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe the 2G spectrum scam would in no way hamper the job of the PAC that is investigating the massive scam right now.He was reacting to the statement made by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee that once the JPC was announced, the ongoing probe by PAC will amount to duplication of work.
'The new Bill introduces no policy or rate changes, leaving financial planning strategies largely unaffected.'
'The considerations for choosing between the old and new tax regimes remain essentially unchanged.'
The Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G scam is set to get a fresh extension with the Lok Sabha on Monday unanimously adopting a resolution to this effect.
According to the current plan in Congress party quarters to end the stand-off on a parliamentary probe into the telecom scam, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to make a statement in Parliament on Tuesday, a day after it convenes, asking the Speaker to form a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the subject.By the rules, Speaker Meira Kumar will authorise this. A JPC generally has two-thirds of its members from the Lok Sabha and the rest from the Rajya Sabha.
Against the backdrop of the opposition's demand for his removal, Joint Parliamentary Committee Chairman P C Chacko on Friday met Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to explain his position on the issues concerning the controversial draft report on 2G scam. There were indications that the meeting of the JPC, which was cancelled on Thursday because of the death of a Lok Sabha member, could take place on May 2 or May 3 to adopt the report.
Sources in the JPC said that panel Chairman P C Chacko is set to tell Raja that instead of appearing before JPC as a witness, he can submit a "rebuttal note" on the statement made by Attorney General G E Vahanvati before the Committee that the controversial press note regarding 2G licences was changed at the last minute by the former telecom minister in 2008 with a different pen.
The government rejected the Opposition's demand for a discussion on electoral roll revision in Bihar, citing that the matter is sub judice and pending before the judiciary.
The Public Accounts Committee of Parliament has sent to the Telecom Ministry, a volley of questions including why views of the Finance Ministry, Law Ministry and even the Prime Minister were ignored when taking decisions on allocation of spectrum in 2008.
Lambasting the cola manufacturers for not offering enough options to the Indian consumers in terms of non-caffeine soft drinks, a parliamentary panel has asked the government to reduce the present permissible limit for caffeine in such drinks.
As the standoff in Parliament on the 2G Spectrum issue showed no signs of resolution, the government today appears to have decided to wear out the Oppostion by not adjourning the House before its scheduled close.
After staging a walkout from the meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the 2G spectrum scam, the BJP on Tuesday accused its Chairman P C Chacko of being 'biased' and threatened to quit the panel.
There is an urgent need for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine the current liability regime besides a high-powered trans-disciplinary independent experts committee to study the issue, says Gopal Krishna.
On a day when the Joint Parliamentary Committee into the 2G scam was set up, the Public Accounts Committee Chairman Murli Manohar Joshi said his panel has every authority to ask Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appear before it.
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.
