The fate of the draft report on spectrum allocations will be decided at the much awaited meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee here on Thursday.
Opposition parties have consulted each other in an effort to form a joint strategy against the report. Though there was no unanimity on the course of action, all Opposition parties, including the DMK, are learnt to have agreed that no dissent notes should be submitted to the panel as the report is not acceptable.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to move a resolution expressing no-confidence in the JPC Chairman, P.C. Chacko. The party’s efforts, however, have not got any support from non-National Democratic Alliance partners. The Left parties are for total rejection of the report. They want the panel to come up with a fresh report after proper discussions within the panel.
BJP leader Yashwant Sinha has held informal discussions with the JPC members belonging to all non-Congress parties. The discussions at various levels were going on till late Tuesday evening.
“We will formulate a joint strategy by Wednesday morning,” deputy leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
The BJP said the JPC report has been turned into ‘Just Protect Congress’ report. “The JPC Chairperson not only denied (former telecom minister) A. Raja a chance to depose before the committee despite his repeated requests, he also ensured that Prime Minister and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram are not summoned by the committee,” BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said.
3 issues
The Opposition parties are likely to raise three issues in the meeting. They will challenge the JPC Chairman’s decision to not to summon Raja, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, before the panel.
They will also seek clarification on the leakage of the report to the media. An Opposition MP said Chacko breached the Parliamentary propriety by not taking the members into confidence while drafting the report.
The Congress, on the other hand, is trying to avoid voting. Chacko said there was no precedence of voting in a JPC. He said members can move dissent notes, which could be added in the final report to be tabled in Parliament.
At present, the Opposition and the UPA have equal numbers in the panel. The Congress is working on the DMK and the Trinamool Congress. Party emissaries were in touch with the DMK members in the panel asking them to submit dissent notes rather than going along with the Opposition’s strategy in the panel.