Turf war on,Speaker meets Joshi,Chacko

The meeting lasted 90 minutes

Faced with the spectacle of two parliamentary panels probing the same issue,allocation of 2G spectrum,Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on Friday met with both PAC chairman Murali Manohar Joshi and JPC chief P C Chacko here to end the current turf war between them. The meeting lasted 90 minutes.

The Speakers intervention came almost a week after Chacko approached her with a request to ensure the two committees did not hold parallel inquiries into one scam.

Sources disclosed that Joshi maintained during the meeting that the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) had been seized of the matter long before anybody had hit upon the idea of even demanding an inquiry by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). The PAC,he argued,was a perennial body mandated by the Constitution to look into such matters. The committee had vast powers,extending far beyond accounting,he said adding that there was no way it could be confined to just CAG reports.

Chacko,on the other hand,pointed out to the Speaker that the JPC had come into being because every political party had wanted it. Now that it was in place,he said,It would look very awkward if the two panels were to conduct parallel inquiries and produce different reports. Who knows,their reports may be even contradictory?

Chacko informed the Speaker that he was articulating the unanimous view of the JPC. Referring to the impasse between the PAC and the JPC over their domains,he said,It is not a welcome situation at all.

Chacko,during his meeting with the Speaker earlier,had also drawn her attention to the issue of propriety of former ministers of NDA government Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha continuing as members on the panel. He had said that many members of the JPC felt that given the fact that the committee was going to scrutinize the telecom policy followed by the Centre from 1998 to 2008,it would be appropriate for the two BJP leaders to opt out of the panel. This,in their view,was a case of conflict of interest because they were both instrumental in formulating the telecom policy of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government.

The BJP had been dismissive,arguing that members on the panel represented their parties and it was not for members of other parties to tell the main opposition party who should be nominated by it to the JPC.