The Hindu : New Delhi News : Speaker calls for meeting today to end impasse

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Thursday, Dec 30, 2010
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Speaker calls for meeting today to end impasse

Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and working chairman of the National Democratic Alliance L.K. Advani, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will be part of a meeting convened by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on Thursday to break the logjam over the Opposition's demand for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the 2G spectrum allocation scam.

With the Parliament standoff threatening to spill over to the Budget session, Ms. Kumar has decided to take a fresh initiative of holding informal talks with the government and Opposition leaders.

The Speaker has called for lunch on Thursday the BJP leaders, as also Mr. Mukherjee and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Pawan Kumar Bansal.

Ms. Kumar would be meeting leaders of other Opposition parties on Friday.

Last week, Mr. Mukherjee, chief trouble-shooter of the United Progressive Alliance government, mooted the idea of a special session to discuss the JPC issue, but the Opposition was quick to reject it and said nothing short of a JPC probe would satisfy them.

Opposition leaders have threatened to stall the proceedings in the Budget session, which is expected to start in February third week, if the JPC demand is not met with. Ms. Kumar recently made a fresh appeal to political parties to find a solution to the impasse.The BJP and other Opposition parties insist that the PAC does not have the powers to fully investigate the 2G spectrum scam.

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