Friday, April 19, 2013

Government hiding truth on 2G scam

Saswat Panigrahi

It was on expected lines. While making former Telecom Minister A Raja responsible for the 2G spectrum scandal, the Congress-led JPC in its draft report gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram. The report rubbishes the 2G loss figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore estimated by CAG and went on to call it “ill-conceived”.
The Opposition has thrashed the JPC report and termed it as nothing more than a ‘Congress report’. The way the country’s biggest scam was probed by the JPC is indeed a moment of concern.
The JPC is a Parliamentary body and is expected to conduct an unbiased probe into any issue that comes before it. But the irony is that while probing the 2G spectrum scam, there was no consensus among the JPC members. It does not help that JPC chairman PC Chacko himself is a Congress spokesperson.
There are a lot of unanswered questions which point to a shoddy and lame-duck investigation by JPC. Former Telecom Minister A Raja, the key accused in the 2G scam, was not even given a chance to depose before the JPC despite his numerous requests. Is it because the Government feared that a lot of skeletons could tumble out of its closets?


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