JPC to summon Yashwant Sinha

NEW DELHI: The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the stock market scam, has decided to call former finance minister Yashwant Sinha to depose before it as a ‘‘witness’’ and answer questions on the UTI fiasco and also on alleged tax evasion by overseas firms, taking advantage of the tax avoidance treaty with Mauritius.
To strike the right political balance, the JPC has also decided to call as witnesses three of Sinha’s predecessors in the finance ministry — P Chidambaram, Jaswant Singh and Manmohan Singh.
The JPC’s decision to summon them is being seen as a belated attempt at examining the question of political accountability for the scam, after the leaked draft report of the committee drew flak from the public, for the conspicuous omission of any probe into the role of politicians.
The committee’s acting chairman for Tuesday’s meet Vijayendra Pal Singh Badnore told reporters that the JPC’s decision to summon the four politicians, two of whom are at present ministers, was couched in parliamentary politeness. ‘‘We decided to invite four former finance ministers to interact with the members of the committee to enhance the credibility of our report.’’
Badnore, a BJP member of the Lok Sabha, was representing the regular chairman, Prakash Mani Tripathi, who underwent some medical tests on Tuesday.
Badnore sought to assure all concerned that the ‘‘interaction with the present and former ministers is not meant to put them in the dock’’. ‘‘We are not calling them to indict them but to know from them about the scam during their time or the policies leading to the scam.’’
He said the JPC had already received a response to a questionnaire it had sent to Sinha, but the reply had come from the finance ministry. The committee, however, felt that it would be better to invite Sinha and the other former finance ministers for interaction. The JPC decided this in view of the precedence already set by an earlier JPC which asked then finance minister Manmohan Singh to depose before it.
Badnore said the JPC would sent broad questions to all the four politicians before hand, but supplementaries would be allowed when they come to interact with the committee. The questions, he said, would be mainly concerning the UTI scam.
Badnore said schedule for the deposition of the ministers had not yet been finalised, but the JPC hoped that they would make it convenient to come before it around the third week of October.