Aam Aadmi Party's Statement on JPC Report
The
leaked JPC report on the 2G scam shows the depths of dishonesty,
shamelessness and partisanship, to which members of Parliament today can
sink to when they deal with matters involving the high and mighty of
major political parties.
The leaked majority report prepared by the Congress and
UPA members purports to give a clean chit to the PM and Mr. Chidambaram
and aportion the blame for the scam on the previous NDA government and
Mr. Raja. They blame the NDA government for the first come, first served
policy for giving licences (saying that the UPA government were only
following the same) and blame Raja alone for tinkering with that and
making it, "first to comply with the LOI to be served first". This is
completely absurd.
Firstly, the Supreme Court faulted the first come first
served policy being applied in 2008 (at spectrum prices of 2001) when
market value of the spectrum had increased several fold, and on
therefore cancelled these licences holding them to be arbitrary, illegal
and malafide. All in the UPA government, including the Prime Minister
and Chidambaram had concurred and been complicit with Mr. Raja on this.
The complicity of Chidambaram is obvious from his extraordinary urgent
directions to an officer of the finance Ministry who had written to the
DOT that spectrum price must be indexed (which meant 3.5 times the 2001
prices), to retrieve and replace his letter and allow the spectrum to be
given at 2001 prices. In fact Raja could not have given spectrum at
2001 prices without the express consent of Chidambaram, since the
government had constituted a committee of these 2 persons to decide
spectrum pricing.
The Prime Minister's complicity in what Raja did is
obvious from the contemporaneous notings of the PMO on this issue when
after being informed of Raja's decision to give spectrum at 2001 prices
and also tamper with the first come first served policy, told his
officers that "PM wants this informally shared with the Dept. Does not
want a formal communication and wants PMO to be at arms length". So,
knowing and approving everything that Raja did, he did not want his name
or involvement to appear on record.
This majority leaked report of the JPC is much like some of its
earlier reports like on the Bofors case where too a similar clean chit
was given by party M.Ps to their political bosses. Such reports expose
the depths to which our M.Ps have fallen and bring the entire
institution of Parliamentary committees into disrepute.
The CBI too has been unable to investigate the involvement of
Chidambaram, and the PM in the 2G scam. They have also been pressurised
to let go of corporate bigwigs like Anil Ambani and Sunil Mittal in the
case, despite the monitoring by the Supreme Court.
All this underlines the urgent need of an independant
Lokpal to investigate such cases. But those in control of the government
and Parliament realised that much of their top leadership would be in
jail if that were to happen. That is why it is being resisted tooth and
nail. The ball is now in the court of the people to give them a fitting
reply in the next elections.
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