UPA, opposition battle it out on JPC issue

UPA’s trouble-shooter and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is making a last ditch effort to break the logjam in Parliament on the joint parliamentary committee (JPC) issue to probe the 2G spectrum issue when he meets with the leaders of political parties on Tuesday.

Since the government’s strategy to divide the opposition parties into secular and non-secular fronts is not working, Pranab Mukherjee is working over-time to find alternatives to ensure that the  budget session beginning February 21 is not a wash out. One such suggestion is to allow the Lok Sabha to discuss the NDA’s demand to set up the JPC for even three days and it would be a nationally televised one.

Later, the house should vote on the JPC resolution and the opposition should accept the verdict of the Lok Sabha. When Mukherjee sounded the Left, SP and other like-minded parties, they gave the go-ahead. But there was a rider; the principal opposition party BJP has to accept this formula as  they would not like to be seen as saboteurs of the opposition unity on JPC.

The government had expected that the BJP would see reason in the wake of some of the recent adverse developments in Karnataka and also serious disclosures in ‘Saffron terror’ cases. But the BJP refused to relent.

It is learnt that the Congress leadership has declined to play any role in the on-going battle between the government and the opposition on the JPC issue.

It has lent its unstinted support to the prime minister to deal with it. In fact, at the fag end of the winter session the government was about to concede the demand of the JPC as NCP leader Sharad Pawar and Pranab Mukherjee had signaled. But HRD and telecom minister Kapil Sibal is reported to have prevailed upon the government to defer the decision as most part of the winter session had already been a wash-out. He argued that that the government must make efforts to resolve the tangle during the intervening period.

Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar has also convened a meeting of leaders of some of the political parties on Monday.