Conceding to the demands of the BJP members, Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC)Chairman P C Chacko on Wednesday decided to summon former Director General, Audit (Post and Telecommunications) R P Singh to depose before the panel.
After the meeting of the JPC, which examined the allocations and pricing of telecom licences and spectrum, Chacko said that he had agreed to call Singh after December 19.
Singh would appear before the JPC for the second time as he has appeared earlier on November 14, 2011.
During the meeting, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha raised the issue and pointed out that the recent statements of Singh before the media and his deposition before the JPC were contradictory and that some of the points he raised before the media were not told to the committee.
Though Chacko offered to circulate the verbatim records of Singh’s deposition on November 14, 2011 before the committee to take a decision and the Congress members wanted to concentrate on fresh witnesses instead of calling Singh again, he had to accept the demand to call Singh to save the time.
In his earlier deposition before the JPC, Singh said that the field audit team, which worked under him, had projected the loss of revenue as `26,685 crore on account of entry fee due to non-issuance of licence and loss of interest.
“Since there was no conclusive evidence for the loss, he had dismissed the figure projected by the field audit team”, he told the JPC.
BJP members, who were not convinced with Singh’s explanation on the loss to the exchequer in the 2G Spectrum scam, asked him whether he signed the report and stood by it.
Singh replied that he had signed the report, but was not responsible for the inputs provided by other auditors who had taken into account the views of the Finance Ministry and the Corporate Affairs Ministry.
He made it clear that he had signed the final report on the direction of his superiors.