The government today sought to end the current impasse in Parliament by reaching out to the BJP for its support to get the Finance Bill and Rail Budget passed but the main Opposition was adamant that the controversial JPC report on 2G scam should not be adopted.
Parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath met NDA working chairperson L.K. Advani, BJP deputy leader in Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde and other MPs to find a way out of the impasse in both Houses to get crucial finance bills passed.
Nath sought BJP’s support to run the House to pass the Rail Budget and the Finance Bill. With only nine working days left in this session, the government wants to get them passed at the earliest. Sources said the BJP is likely to cooperate on these two matters but will not allow any other legislative business.
Advani is understood to have told Nath that the matter should be discussed on Monday as leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj is in Karnataka for the election campaign. But he emphasised that the BJP will not allow the controversial JPC draft report on 2G spectrum scam to be adopted.
The BJP is miffed by the allegation in the JPC report that the telecom policy followed by the erstwhile the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee had led to the loss of Rs 42,000 crore to the exchequer. More than half of the JPC members yesterday met Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to demand that P.C. Chacko be removed from the post of chairperson of the panel and another member be appointed in his place.
The CBI affidavit in the Supreme Court has said the agency’s status report on coal allocation scam was “shared” with the law minister “as desired by him” and that senior officials of PMO and coal ministry had also seen it. The BJP has demanded that Kumar should step down.