Attorney-General Goolam E Vahanvati has been summoned as a witness at the next meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the 2G spectrum allocation scam scheduled for October 3. Sources disclosed here on Sunday that some Congress members were unhappy over the decision of JPC chairman P C Chacko to call Vahanvati because they felt that ideally,the top law officer should not be examined by a parliamentary committee over the advice given by him to the government. This,they felt,was not in conformity with principles of governance. Chacko,however,said he had acted on the basis of a general sense of the committee. The members of the JPC had authorised Chacko to take a call on sending for witnesses in the wake of differences among members on who all should be summoned. While BJP members insisted that he summon both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram,the Congress members had opposed the demand. Chacko is also likely to take a view on this demand as well as the broader issue of calling more witnesses at the next sitting of the panel. The A-G had been called by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament in April 2011 when it was examining the CAG report on 2G spectrum allocation issue. However,he could not appear before the committee due to a verbal clash between the ruling alliance and the opposition members.
