JPC meet: BJP, Chacko fail to break deadlock

BJP members today ended their nearly three-month boycott of the Joint Parliamentary Committee but stuck to their demand of calling PM Manmohan Singh as a witness to examine his role in the 2G spectrum allocation.

The deadlock in the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the 2G spectrum continued as the BJP remained adamant in calling both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P Chidambaram as witnesses before the panel.

Even as the BJP leaders returned to the panel's meeting on Thursday after a long boycott, it stuck to its earlier stand while panel chairman PC Chacko refused to budge.

Chacko offered to call a separate meeting of the panel to discuss the contentious list of witnesses. In the meeting, CPI's Gurudas Dasgupta and BJP's Yashwant Sinha also entered into an argument with Chacko over his interpretation of the deposition of former cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar to the media. Chacko had claimed that Chandrasekhar never said that the PM overlooked his suggestion for hiking entry fee for 2G at Rs. 35,000 crore.

Rejecting reports that the BJP will settle for sending a questionnaire to the PM instead of the demand to call him, Sinha told HT that there was no such proposal. “I don't know where these reports are coming from. It ended on the idea that in another meeting the list of witnesses would be discussed.”