New Delhi, October 10: Claiming that it was imperative for the people to know the truth, the BJP on Thursday released its note dissenting with the 2G JPC draft report prepared by committee chairman P.C. Chacko. It has accused Mr. Chacko of covering up the scam on the directions of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.
At a news conference here, five of the six BJP members on the JPC said they had chosen to go public with the dissent note as they had ‘serious apprehensions’ that it would be ‘edited’.
Members of other parties, who also differed with the draft report, have handed over separate notes to the JPC secretariat.
The BJP’s 36-page dissent report accuses Mr. Chacko of violating every rule in the book to prepare a report tailored to protect the ruling party.
“It is flawed from the first page. This report is a bundle of contradictions, of half-truths and untruths,” said Yashwant Sinha, who, along with fellow BJP MPs Jaswant Singh, Gopinath Munde, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Harin Pathak and Dharmendra Pradhan, filed the dissent note. “The Congress vice-president should tear and throw away the JPC report when it is tabled in Parliament,” Mr. Sinha said taking a jibe at Rahul Gandhi, who had recently used similar strong words against the ordinance (since revoked) on convicted lawmakers.
“The Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Finance Ministry, and the DoT and its officials — all of them had a hand in preparing the report and in covering up the whole thing,” Mr. Sinha charged.
The BJP leaders maintained that they were going against convention and discussing the report with the media even before it was made public as “Mr. Chacko himself has violated all rules.”
The six MPs also wrote to Speaker Meira Kumar alleging that Mr. Chacko had acted in an “arbitrary and authoritarian manner” at JPC meetings.
