2G: BJP MPs walk out of JPC meet, RBI Governor Subbarao deposes

New Delhi: Five Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members walked out of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) meeting on the 2G spectrum scam on Tuesday after their demand for a list of witnesses to be called was rejected.

Congress leader PC Chacko said no witnesses would be called, following which the BJP members walked out. BJP leader Yashwant Sinha had written a letter to Chacko demanding a list of witnesses be finalised. Chacko wrote back to say he's been authorised to take a decision and no witnesses would be called.

Last month too, the BJP members had walked out of the JPC meet demanding that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram be called as witnesses.

The party had threatened that if the Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Pulok Chatterjee (Principal Secretary to Prime Minister's Office) and TKA Nair (Advisor to the Prime Minister) are not called to depose before the JPC, then its MPs would withdraw from the panel altogether.

BJP MPs Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Pradhan and Gopinath Munde had walked out after calling the JPC a kangaroo court.

Meanwhile, former finance secretary and present RBI Governor DV Subbarao appeared before the JPC on Tuesday to face questions on the role of the finance ministry in spectrum allocation at 2001 prices.

Sources say Subbarao has told the JPC that Finance Minister P Chidambaram and former telecom minister A Raja had agreed on licence allocation. He has also told the JPC that there was zero loss in 2G spectrum allocation.

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