2G: Congress subverting truth using JPC, says Arun Jaitley

Questioning the clean chit given by the JPC to the PM on 2G spectrum allocation, BJP leader Arun Jaitley accused Congress of using the JPC to subvert the truth.

Bangalore: Questioning the clean chit given by the Joint Parliamentary Committee to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 2G spectrum allocation, BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Friday accused Congress of using the JPC to "subvert" the truth.

Jaitley said former telecom minister A Raja`s correspondence with the Prime Minister made it clear that Singh and the then finance minister (P Chidambaram) were fully in the loop of what he was doing. "If the JPC finds that they were innocent, all I can tell you is this JPC report will meet the same fate as the Bofors JPC. Its credibility will probably be worse than earlier JPCs", he said on the draft JPC findings. The report has said Singh was "misled" by Raja whose assurances stood "belied" and also rubbished the loss figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore estimated by CAG, saying it was "ill-conceived". Jaitley said, "History repeats itself once as a tragedy and again as a farce. This is the second time in history that the Congress and UPA neck deep in corruption had subverted the truth using the JPC mechanism." Reminding of the times when the Bofors scam had broken out, he said a JPC under late B Shankaranand had come out with a "fictional report" saying the bribes in the deal were actually winding up charges because middlemen and agents were asked to wind up their business. Jaitley said, "Nobody in the world believed in the sentence of what that (Bofors) JPC had said. That JPC report went into the dustbin of history. It is a scar on India`s parliamentary democracy." "I have only seen in the media that so enthusiastic were the authors of this draft that it reached the media before it reached the members. I am sure that if privileges of Parliament exist, those who have given it to the media before they gave it to the JPC members will be seriously hauled up for their breach of privilege." Jaitley said, "The whole country knows that the 2G scam was a monumental scam." In 2008, spectrum was allotted at 2001 prices, causing loss to the public exchequer. Even while implementing the allocation of the throwaway price spectrum, the first-come-first-serve policy was subverted with Raja shifting the goalpost half way through, he said. Asked what BJP members on the JPC would do, he said, "Our members are there as individual members and once they receive the report, I am sure they will react and certainly react with a good conscience." PTI