2G scam: PC Chacko has numbers so will his report clear PM?

The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the 2G spectrum allocation scam is scheduled to meet on September 23.

Sources here said the chairman PC Chacko will make another bid to seek approval of his draft report, absolving the prime minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P Chidambaram from any wrongdoing and putting the entire blame on the then telecom minister A Raja.

Chacko had failed in last April to get the JPC’s approval to his draft report when 15 MPs belonging to the Opposition had rejected it.

The Congress party is now confident that with the nomination of two Rajya Sabha members Congress’ P Bhattarcharya and Ashok S Ganguly to the 30-member committee the scale has now tilted in its favour. Chacko has said once the report is finalised, it would be presented to Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar and later tabled in parliament during the winter session.

Sources said there would be no problem in getting the report approved at the meeting as the UPA has a majority now.

Surprisingly, the committee in its minutes does not even mention of its April meeting, where most of the MPs had rejected the draft report. Its records show last 56th meeting taking place on February 12, 2013. While the Opposition protested that the JPC cannot proceed with preparing the report without cross-examining the prime minister and Chidambaram, Chacko went ahead with drafting the report on the ground that the JPC probe cannot go on for ever.

The meeting that has been convened on September 23 is specifically for “consideration and adoption of the draft report” that Chacko had circulated in April, only to find it stonewalled by 15 MPs of the Opposition.

The draft report, which will be again put to vote in this meeting, is believed to indict the then NDA government for causing the exchequer the loss of more than Rs50,000 crore by adopting the new telecom policy in 1999.