A day after the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram, JPC member and CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta on Saturday blamed its chairman P C Chacko for adopting a “subjective and biased” report to put the entire panel to shame.
Terming the JPC report “despicable”, Dasgupta came out with a 60-page dissent note in the form of “a parallel report” indicting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, claiming he was morally responsible for the 2G scam and loss to the exchequer.
“The Prime Minister is morally, legally and knowingly responsible for the mess. He has allowed Raja to do it,” said Dasgupta. He was not alone in coming out with a dissent note to the JPC report, which was officially adopted by a majority of 16 to 11 in the meeting on Saturday. CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury and AIADMK member Thambidurai also submitted their dissent notes separately to the JPC Chairman. The main Opposition BJP is also gearing up to present a dissent note in the form a parallel report. BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said that his party will give its dissent note in two weeks.
Alleging that the JPC Chairman cherry-picked facts from bags full of documents and collected evidence placed before the committee as suits the Chairperson and UPA and an attempt to ignore and belittle the CAG, Dasgupta said it was only a sign of authoritarian and gross infringement on Parliament.
“If they do not place incontrovertible facts that are available in documents placed before the committee, we need to place facts for the Parliament and nation at large to judge for themselves the travesty of justice and the blatant attempts to whitewash the inadequacies and wrongdoing of people who have belayed the trust placed in them by the public,” he justified in giving a dissent note.
Attacking Chacko, Dasgupta said no attempt was made to build a consensus with the committee on the basis of the draft, because the report was never discussed. “Unfortunately it was leaked to the press on the same day it was sent to members of the JPC,” he said.
To a query, Dasgupta said Chacko may not append his dissent to the JPC report. “That’s the reason, we are going for public. But, I challenge Chacko to say that my parallel report is wrong,” he asserted. Dasgupta said going by the experience, in future, people will not demand a JPC into any issue.
In the note, Dasgupta said, “The inescapable conclusion is that the PM cannot be absolved of the serious charge of dereliction of duty. He must have believed that if he had taken pre-emptive action, the boat should have been rocked, the government would have collapsed. There the story that Raja misled the PM does not hold good.”
When pointed out that Samajwadi Party, seen to be friendly to Left parties, also voted in support of the JPC report, Dasgupta said, “We are critical of everybody who supported the report and helped the reported to be adopted by absenting.”
Even after indicting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Dasgupta added that he would not ask him to resign.