New Delhi, August 22
All the members of the main Opposition party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today staged a walkout of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) meeting on 2G Spectrum allocation, demanding deposition of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram before the committee.

BJP, which has been contemplating quitting the JPC over its demand, has threatened that if the Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Pulok Chatterjee (Principal Secretary to Prime Minister's Office) and TKA Nair (Adviser to the Prime Minister) are not called to depose before the JPC, its MPs would withdraw from the panel altogether.

BJP MPs Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Pradhan and Gopinath Munde walked out after calling the JPC a kangaroo court. The sixth member of the committee from BJP, Harin Pathak, was not present.

Sources said there was high-pitched drama between the BJP and the Congress members, who are opposing the idea of calling the Prime Minister and Finance Minister as witnesses in the 2G Spectrum scam, before the BJP members walked out.

Yashwant Sinha and Ravi Shankar Prasad accused the Congress of creating a hostile environment during the meeting.

Sinha said the moment his party raised this demand at the meeting, “junior members of the Congress used foul language and targeted us. We were left with no choice but to walk out.”

His colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Congress had provoked the walkout with its utterances.

They also accused the panel’s chairman, PC Chacko of the Congress, of being a mute spectator to the Congress members’ conduct, calling the committee a “kangaroo court”.

"It was amazing to see the behaviour of first-time MPs of Congress using such language against us. A hostile atmosphere was created, so we had no option but to walk out," Prasad said.

The move is seen as part of a larger political plan of the BJP. Already seeking resignation of the Prime Minister in Parliament over the CAG report on coal blocks allocation, the walkout seems part of the plan to maintain pressure on Singh.

By staying away from the JPC, the BJP can claim with its members not being part of the panel, the committee does not represent the Parliament.

The meeting, however, continued after the BJP walkout and the Chairman was given the mandate to decide on the further list of witnesses.