Will JPC, PAC save House the blushes of different results?

Even as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls in some of the conspicuous players in the 2G spectrum allocation and the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) set up in the budget session of parliament to look specifically into all aspects of the spectrum allocation issue, there is fear that there would be an ugly fallout if the two committees were either to confront each other.

JPC chairman and Congress leader PC Chacko has already written to PAC chief Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP that the PAC should confine itself to the CAG observations on the 2G spectrum issue.

Joshi had stated subsequently that there was no conflict of interest or jurisdiction if the two committees were to go over the same ground. Joshi had pointed out that the Supreme Court was looking at some of the same issues.

“The confrontation between two parliamentary committees is not good,” said a senior member of parliament and a member of one of the two committees on condition of anonymity.

“It would have been better if the PAC had recused itself from looking at the 2G spectrum scam in deference to the wishes of all parties in parliament,” he said.

“It is not the question of redundancy of the JPC and the PAC looking at the same aspects of the 2G scam independent of each other. The problem would be if they were to arrive at different conclusions on the issue. It would be an embarrassment and it would affect the credibility of parliament as an institution,” he explained.

“I am not worried about the politics of it. I am more concerned about the credibility of parliament as an institution,” he said.