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.