New Delhi: Under attack from the BJP and other opposition parties over the draft JPC report on 2G scam, the government on Friday said the report is not yet “finalised” and requested the media and the opposition to “refrain” from “speculation”.
“The JPC report is yet to be finalised. JPC is going to meet, and once it is finalised, it shall be presented to Parliament. And that’s the time we all shall debate it because we will have to look at what the reasons are in the report for the conclusion that they have arrived at and we don’t know either at the moment,” Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said.
“So I request the opposition and the media to refrain from speculating and to wait so that a proper debate can take place, both within Parliament and outside it,” he said.
The minister said, “We are now committing the same mistake as we did in the past. Without the CAG submitting its report to Parliament, the oppostion started protesting, newspapers started writing well in advance and leakages of the report made public discourse very difficult. So I would suggest we should not commit the same mistake”.
The government is under fire from the opposition over the draft JPC report with the BJP saying that it appeared like a “Congress document” where attempts have been made to save its leaders including the Prime Minister.
Slamming the leakage of the draft JPC report as a “gross breach of Parliamentary propriety”, BJP on Friday said its contents appeared like Congress documents where attempts have been made to save its leaders including the Prime Minister.
“The media showed the JPC draft report on 2G scam extensively. This is a gross breach of Parliamentary propriety where any report draft is debated, discussed, amendments are moved in the formal meeting and thereafter views are taken,” BJP spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad told reporters here.
“The draft report looks like a Congress document and not a JPC report in which there is an overpowering desire to save its leaders including the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister in the 2G scam and yet to objectively consider the wider ramification of this massive scam which shamed the country,” he said.
Prasad said he was yet to go through the report as it was given to the members today only. “This is a matter of grief and surprise that violating the tradition of discussing the draft report in the meeting in which amendments would be moved, even before a discussion could take place, this has come out in the media. This is highly unfortunate and we condemn it,” the BJP leader said.
The JPC report, which was circulated among members on Thursday before its adoption on April 25, gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 2G spectrum allocation, saying he was “misled” by the then Telecom Minister A Raja whose assurances stood “belied”.
The report also rubbishes the loss figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore estimated by CAG, saying it was “ill-conceived”. (PTI)