"Everybody has his own opinion" says Congress' Hanumantha Rao on Sharad Pawar's 'no need for JPC' remark

Hyderabad: A Day after NCP chief Sharad Pawar said there is no need for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the Adani issue Senior Congress leader and former Rajya Sabha member V Hanumantha Rao on Sunday said that everyone one is free to hold his opinion.
Rao said JPC was formed in Bofors in 1987. "Pawar said that JPC should not have been formed. It is his opinion. The law will take its own course. The judiciary will take its own course," Rao said while talking to ANI.
"But the majority of the parties are asking for a JPC into the Adani issue. Everybody has got his own opinion," he added.
Addressing a press conference on Saturday, after his explosive interview with a television news channel, Pawar said there is "no need" for a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the Adani issue as the Supreme Court-appointed committee will be more reliable and unbiased in its probe into the claims made in the report against the Indian conglomerate.
"There is a certain structure to a JPC. If a JPC comprises 21 members, 15 of them will be from the government side, as the other parties can only have a maximum of 6 members. So, in all likelihood, the JPC report will only reaffirm the government's position on the matter. So, I think instead of a JPC, a Supreme Court-appointed committee will be more reliable and unbiased," Pawar said.
Reiterating that a Supreme Court-appointed committee will be reliable, the NCP chief said one should introspect on the relevance one should give to a "foreign company" and the position it has taken on an "internal matter" of the country.
The NCP chief's remarks are at variance with those of the Congress, its key Maha Vikas Aghadi ally, which has insisted on a JPC probe into the Hindenburg report on the Adani group. Several other Opposition parties have supported the demand for a JPC probe.
"....Someone gave a statement, and it created uproar in the country. Such statements were given earlier too, which created a ruckus. But the importance given to the issue this time was out of proportion. There was a need to think about who raised the issue (gave report). We had not heard the name of who gave the statement. What is the background? When such issues are raised, they create uproar in the country, the cost is borne ....how it impacts the economy. We can't ignore such things, and it seems (it) was targeted," Pawar told NDTV in an interview.
He said the SC-appointed committee has been given guidelines, and a timeframe to submit its probe report.
The second half of the budget session saw continuous disruptions over the demand for a JPC into the Hindenburg-Adani row.
The Supreme Court had last month set up a six-member expert committee "to investigate if there was a regulatory failure in dealing with the alleged contravention of laws pertaining to the securities market in relation to the Adani Group or other companies".
The committee was asked to give the report in two months. (ANI)