New Delhi, September 18
Even as RBI Governor and former Finance Secretary D Subbarao was grilled by some Opposition members part of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on Telecom investigating the 2G Spectrum scam, the BJP today staged a walkout from the meeting protesting against the alleged “dictatorial” attitude of committee chairman PC Chacko.

Four BJP members led by former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha walked out of the proceedings alleging that they were not permitted to take up the issue of finalising witnesses to be called to depose before the committee.

The BJP has threatened to quit the JPC, which, it alleged, was biased. The committee chairman was being directed from somewhere else, the party alleged. Chacko was behaving like a Congress spokesperson rather than the chairman of an independent unbiased and impartial committee of Parliament, they said.

BJP members had also walked out of the JPC meeting on August 22 alleging they were not allowed to put forward names of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram as witnesses.

The prevailing political chasm between the Congress and the BJP is only expected to grow further as the JPC chairman clarified that Chidambaram was not required to testify on the telecom scam before a parliamentary committee.

Chacko maintained that Subbarao, while deposing before the committee, had said that there was no loss to the exchequer due to allocation of radio waves on the “first-come-first-served” basis.

However, Opposition members of the JPC, including those from the Left parties, alleged the JPC chairman was giving out one side of the story and that it had emerged from Subbarao’s deposition that the Finance Ministry did not perform to the level that it should have in 2008.

The political drama only seems to the developing as the BJP has threatened not only to quit the JPC, but also put all issues in public domain.