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Jaswant, Sinha, Manmohan, Chidambaram to depose before JPC

In a significant move, the Joint Parliamentary Committee probing the stock scam and the temporary freeze on UTI US-64 scheme decided on Tuesday to summon Finance Minister Jaswant Singh and his predecessors Yashwant Sinha, P Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh next month for hearing.

"We have decided to invite them to the JPC as we feel they will enhance the credibility of the report and throw some light, especially on the UTI policy matters", acting chairman of JPC Vijandera Pal Singh Badanore told reporters.

He said the JPC would like to hear their views on the UTI when they were the finance ministers.

Badanore made it clear that the first draft report "leaked by the media" had also contained the depositions received from various quarters and that it was in no way the final view.

The JPC acting chairman said queries to Jaswant Singh would generally relate to his tenure as the external affairs minister and his views on the use of the Mauritius route by stockbrokers and other investors in the stock market to evade taxes in India.

He said Chidambaram, Manmohan Singh and Sinha's views would be ascertained on the UTI policies and its linkage to the temporary freeze on the largest mutual fund's flagship scheme US-64.

Badanore said he was officiating in place of Prakash Mani Tripathi as the latter had to go for some medical tests. "There is nothing to worry about his health," he clarified.

"We had to take a lot of decisions today as we were running short of time", he said.

"Today's meeting finalised the road map of the report, which we want to present in the first week of the winter session of Parliament', Badanore said.

Badanore said the draft report had already been submitted in phases and the JPC chairman had invited suggestions and comments from members on that report, which would be ready by the end of this week.

"Members were also requested by the chairman to undertake any personal discussions on the report circulated to the members, if required, by 23rd of September", he said.

He said the report is proposed to be completed and circulated by October 2 this year.

"We will be holding meetings from the 7th to 11th October on the draft report sent by the chairman and the report is proposed to be finalised between 22nd and 31st of October", he said.

The acting JPC chairman said as many as 75 sittings of the JPC have been held and about 50,000 to 60,000 papers circulated during the period.

On the need for calling the former finance ministers, he said: "The committee felt interaction with them will enhance the credibility of the report".

"We are not calling them to indict them but to get their reaction on the stock market scam besides getting information", he said.

He said the finance ministry officials had already replied to the questionnaire sent to them and the JPC would soon send a set of questionnaires to former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha.

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