New Delhi, August 5
In a bid to derail the Opposition campaign against the UPA government on the Pathak Authority report, the Centre has decided to table its findings in Parliament on Monday along with its Action Taken Report (ATR).
The Opposition had disrupted proceedings in Parliament on Friday to protest the report’s leakage to the media even before it was submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday evening. The government found itself cornered as Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee also joined the members in expressing his displeasure on this matter.
While the government is investigating how the report was leaked, it is hoping to deflect attention from this lapse by tabling the Pathak authority report on the Volcker allegations in Parliament three days after it was submitted. Finance Minister P.Chidmabaram, whose ministry has to study the report and prepare the ATR, is working overtime this weekend to meet the short deadline
“Never in the history of Parliament has any government tabled a report and the ATR so quickly,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said here today. He explained that it was not necessary to call a formal meeting of the Union Cabinet to clear the report and the ATR, stating that as per the rules, the Prime Minister could proceed after consulting his senior colleagues on the matter.
UPA managers are hoping the whole controversy over Volcker’s report on Iran’s oil-for-food programme naming former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and the Congress as contractual beneficiaries, will come to a close after the Pathak report is tabled and discussed in Parliament.
However, the Opposition’s attempts to keep the issue alive will be countered by the UPA partners who will seek to embarrass the BJP by raising the Kandahar issue and the allegation that the NDA government had paid money for the release of passengers on the
hijacked Indian Airlines flight. “If the BJP persists with its charge that the government had manipulated the Congress party’s exoneration, it will only reflect poorly on the Opposition as it will appear that they are challenging the Pathak report,” remarked a senior UPA minister. Once Parliament has dealt with this matter, the ball will then be in the Congress court which then will be required to take a view on how it should deal with Mr Natwar Singh, who had resigned from the Cabinet in the wake of this controversy and was subsequently removed from the party’s working committee. The Congress is in a dilemma as to how it should proceed, as it appears that no money trail has been traced to Mr Natwar Singh or his son Jagat Singh. However, the former minister is stated to have misused his position in the party to introduce his son and his business associates to the then Iraqi leadership.
On the other hand, the party is more concerned over how Mr Natwar Singh has been openly hobnobbing with the Opposition to embarrass the government on the Indo-US nuclear deal issue.
