JPC on Jain report likely

Forming a JPC, sources in the UF said, was one of the suggestions made by Prime Minister I K Gujral in his meeting with senior Congress leaders over dinner last night. The idea behind it was to enable the ruling coalition, and the Congress, to tide over the crisis confronting them as a result of the leak of the Jain Commission report.

Gujral indulged in some plainspeak during the meeting. He is learnt to have advised Congress leaders against pressing the matter too far.

Any precipitate action, he reportedly told them, would grievously harm the interests of the two political formations and end up benefiting the BJP — a situation which the two sides agreed had to be averted.

A JPC on the findings of the Jain Commission, UF sources pointed out, would serve two purposes. While it would help the Government defuse the crisis temporarily by assuaging the sentiments of the Congress, it would also prevent the BJP from making an issue out of the alleged revelations and capitalising on them.

The JPC, it was pointed out, could comprise members of various political parties, as was the case of the committees set up to look into the Bofors case and the securities scam.

With these deliberations Gujral has apparently provided both the UF and the Congress with a temporary respite.

At the end of the meeting, both sides agreed to down the ante for a while thus making life easy for the non-BJP tie-up at the Centre. But the entente took some hard work from both sides before emerging.

Gujral had a long talk with Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta at 6.30 pm where the two discussed the crux of the Jain Commission report. Both were aware of the contents, having been in possession of the report for more than two months. Gujral and Gupta agreed that the Prime Minister would concede the Congress demand and go even further.

Once this was cleared by the United Front core leaders, the Prime Minister was ready. Kesri and six senior party colleagues were duly explained the sensitivity of the issue. In the dinner discussion, sources said, Gujral played a cool hand and was accommodating to an extent the Congress perhaps didn’t want.

Kesri was in any case informed of the politics within the Congress which forced his hand on the Jain Commission report. The Prime Minister is said to have dwelt on the alleged Congress role in LTTE affairs in the past, a factor worrying Kesri too.

At the end of the meeting, the Congress team was “satisfied” that the report’s contents could be explosive if played around with. The consensus was to cool down, after the necessary voicing of demands over the next few weeks by the Congress.

The general agreement was to the effect that the Jain Commission report would be debated over two days in the winter session of Parliament, possibly on November 24 and 25. The setting up of the JPC is seen as a sure way of diffusing the crisis, though temporarily.

It may, however, be noted that while the JPC on the Bofors case ended up stirring a hornet’s nest because of what was seen as the dubious role of its chairman B Shankaranand, the report of the one on securities scam, chaired by veteran Congress leader Ram Niwas Mirdha, was never fully complied with by the then Union Government headed by P V Narasimha Rao.