Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi has excused himself from the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) created to examine the 2G spectrum issue, according to news reports. Singhvi has exited the JPC saying that he had appeared as a senior advocate in the court for operators and had attacked telecom policies from 2002 to 2004 when Pramod Mahajan, Arun Shourie and Ram Vilas Paswan were telecom ministers (in the NDA government).
Thus, he added, he had requested the Rajya Sabha Chairman for recusal and the request has been accepted. Singhvi?s name figures on the list of 10 members from Rajya Sabha, who are to be included in the 30-member JPC, in which 20 members will be from the Lok Sabha.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will be moving a motion for the appointment of a JPC in the Upper House today.
Other members whose name have been proposed are PJ Kurien and Praveen Rashtrapal from the Congress, Sitram Yechury from the CPI-M, Tiruchi Shiva from the DMK, SS Ahluwalia and Ravi Shankar Prasad from the BJP, YP Trivedi from the NCP, Satish Chandra Mishra from the BSP and Ramchandra Prasad Singh from the Janta Dal (United).
