Scam Central (Update)

India formally set up a 30-member joint parliamentary committee to investigate the alleged 2G spectrum scam, reports the Economic Times. In a pyrrhic victory for the Congress, the committee will probe the allocation and pricing of telecom licenses from 1998 to 2009–which could implicate the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government of Atal Behari Vajpayee (in office from 1998-2003) as well as the present Congress coalition. 

Meanwhile, billionaire industrialist Ratan Tata is still waging his Quixotic battle against the leak of his and others' taped conversations with Niira Radia–a powerful lobbyist–which ensured that the 2G license allotments could not be swept under the carpet after the media began running transcripts (sometimes in exaggerated fashion) on an almost daily basis.

Pleading with the Supreme Court to restrain the media from publishing and broadcasting unverified conversations of individuals, his lawyer warned, "The inflated notion of freedom of the press needs to be corrected. If it is allowed to publish such conversation, then paparazzi type of media would develop," reports the Hindustan Times. Never mind the fact that Tata's speedy route to the SC shows that the wheels of justice turn fast indeed for folks on the Forbes list.  Tata also invoked the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, though that the spirit of that law has been mostly changed by the introduction of the Right to Information Act in 2005, says the Times of India.  Which begs the question: Is it an official secret or an open secret that Indian governments are corrupt?

Now, back to the JPC:

Supposedly, the probe committee will give its report by the end of the monsoon session of parliament (i.e. at the end of the summer).

The panel will comprise 20 members from the Lok Sabha (i.e. the elected lower house) and 10 from the Rajya Sabha (the nominated upper house), according to the Hindustan Times.

The Congress has eight Lok Sabha MPs in the panel to the BJP's four, and there is one member each from Congress allies DMK (whose A. Raja was the telecom minister who was first implicated in the alleged scam) and Trinamool Congress. BJP-allies the Janata Dal-United and Biju Janata Dal each have one member in the committee, while "flexible" parties, the Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party, Communist Party of India and AIADMK also each have one member.

The members from the Rajya Sabha will likely be nominated today–but it has been suggested earlier that the Congress will have 11 members in total, which would mean 3 members from the RS.