NEW DELHI: After Congress managed to wrest one seat in the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the 2G scam, the Opposition members approached the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, but he expressed his helplessness on the issue.
Those who pleaded before Deputy Chairman K Rahman Khan were AIADMK MP V Maitreyan, BJP leader S S Ahluwalia,
Pyarimohan Mohapatra from BJD, Sitraram Yechury from the CPM, besides others. The Deputy Chairman, however, said he did not hear them press for division, and so went by voice-vote.
In the 245-member Rajya Sabha with one vacancy, UPA enjoys the support of 121, while the Opposition has 124 MPs. Talking to Express, V Maitreyan said the Opposition had planned to induct him in the JPC and had planned to move an amendment to the motion on August 17. But, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rajiv Shukla, who was supposed to move the motion, absented himself then, realising that they were in minority at that time and the second time, on Tuesday, when they brought the motion, clubbing both Sitaram Yechury’s and Rajya Sabha MP EM Sudarsana Natchiappan’s names, the Opposition was caught unaware.
It was a clever ploy by Congress to move a single resolution, as both the ruling party and the Opposition got one seat each on the JPC. If two separate motions were moved to fill up the vacancies, one caused by resignation of Jayanti Natarajan and the other by the retirement of Yechury, then the chances were that Congress could have lost both the seats.
