New Delhi:
The BJP is trying to bandage the fracture that appeared in the last few days in its campaign against the Prime Minister.
Last night, party president Nitin Gadkari met with Murli Manohar Joshi, who is the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Joshi and his party had in the recent past expressed diametrically opposite views on the offer of the Prime Minister to appear before the PAC to answer questions on the mother of all Indian scams, the 2G scam.
Issuing a statement after meeting Gadkari, Joshi has now said he is not opposed to his party's demands for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the 2G scam.
During their meeting, Joshi reportedly reassured Gadkari that he is not crossing the party line on the issue of JPC.
He also stressed that he is doing nothing more than his job as the Chairman of the PAC in studying the 2G scam.
Related to the allocation of mobile license in 2008 by former Telecom Minister A Raja, the scam could be worth upto Rs. 1.76 lakh crore, according to the government's auditor.
Murli Manohar Joshi's statement:"As the Chairman of the PAC, I believe in the Committee's vast powers in bringing greater accountability to public spending. I commit myself to playing this role effectively... as a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, I stand fully committed to the demand for the formation of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to look into the broader questions related to corruption facing the country today," said Mr Joshi.
However, his earlier comments which telegraphed confidence in the PAC, had his party worried that its JPC-only stand was being crippled by one of its own.
Joshi had said that the PM's offer- made first in a speech at a Congress conclave and then sent in writing to the PAC earlier this week - would be considered "at an appropriate time." That stopped the BJP in its tracks - the party has said repeatedly that the PAC is not the right forum to investigate the 2G scam. The complexity of the swindle, as well as the issues it raises- of governance and accountability- merits a JPC, the BJP insists.
Joshi in contrast had said that the PAC's scope of inquiry is not limited. Even as Joshi seemed to back the PAC, party leader Sushma Swaraj tweeted why it was not the right panel to look into the 2G scam.
"The scope of the PAC is totally different from that of the JPC. While the PAC deals with accounts, the JPC deals with accountability and governance," she posted. "Under the Lok Sabha Rules, PAC cannot call a Minister, much less the Prime Minister. Prime Minister's offer therefore, has no meaning." Sushma wrote in another tweet.