One of our earlier posts (read here) tackled the question of whether the Public Accounts Committee could summon ministers or not. According to a direction of the speaker, a Minister cannot be summoned by a financial committee. There are no specific procedures for the Joint Parliamentary Committees mentioned in the rules. However, according to the Directions by the Speaker general rules applicable to Committees shall apply to all Committees, though specific directions can be given for some committees (read here). In other words, the general directions for all committees would be the same, unless a specific direction was given relating to a particular committee. In the Joint Committee of Stock Market Scam and Matters relating there to, a specific request was made to the Speaker, Lok Sabha by the Chairman, JPC on 20th May, 2002 for permitting the Committee to call for written information on certain points from the Minister of Finance and Minister of External Affairs. The Speaker accorded the necessary permission on 1st June, 2002. Consequently, the Minister of Finance (Shri Jaswant Singh), the Minister of External Affairs (Shri Yashwant Sinha) and the former Finance and External Affairs ministers (Shri P. Chidambaram and Dr. Manmohan Singh respectively) testified before the Committee. Read the text of the report here.
The National Telecom Policy was adopted by the cabinet on May 31, 2012. It was released in public domain later in June. Among other things, the policy aims to provide a single licence framework, un-bundle spectrum from licences, and liberalise spectrum. Previously, the central government had decided to unbundle spectrum and licenses for all future licences on January 29, 2011. TRAI too in its recommendation dated May 11, 2010 and April 23, 2012 sought to de-link spectrum from licences. The Supreme Court in the 2G judgment had held that spectrum should not be allocated on a first-cum-first-serve basis and should instead be auctioned. In the April 23 recommendations, TRAI has detailed the mechanism for auctioning spectrum. TRAI has also recommended moving to a unified licence framework under which a single licence would be required to provide any telecom service. It has also recommended that spectrum should be liberalised so that any technology could be used to exploit it. The new policy is in line with the government decisions and TRAI recommendations discussed above. The policy also aims to achieve higher connectivity and quality of telecommunication services. Its key features are detailed below.
The policy as adopted can be accessed here.