NEW DELHI - India's Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government Thursday moved a motion in the Lok Sabha or Lower House of the Parliament for a thorough probe into the 2G spectrum scam by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).  

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Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee moved the motion to form JPC to investigate the telecom policy pursued from 1998 to 2009.

The JPC will consist of 30 members out of which 15 will be from the UPA and 15 from the Opposition parties. The Committee will have 20 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha or Upper House of the Parliament.

The JPC members include Kishore Chandra Deo, Baban Singh, JP Agarwal, Jitender Hooda, PC Chacko, Manish Tewari, Nirmal Khatri, Adhir Ranjam Chowdhary, TR Baalu Kalyan Banerjee, Jaswant Singh, Yaswhwant Sinha, Harin Pathak, Sharad Yadav, Gopinath Munde, Dara Singh Chauhan, Akhilesh Yadav, Gurudas Dasgupta, Arjun Charan Sethi and Thambidurai.

The report prepared by the JPC will be submitted at the end of Monsoon Session in September.  

"I feel that I should express my regret that I could not sort out the issue due to which the entire winter session was lost. The fact clearly demonstrated certain areas of concerns which we have to address together. When we seek the vote of the people, immediately after the elections we assume the office and we have to take the oath to protect and follow the Constitution. It's our constitutional responsibility to discharge our duties as Parliamentarians," Pranab Mukherjee said while moving the motion.

"I might have failed to understand the sentiments of other Parliamentarians. My gratitude to the Opposition that impasse was resolved. It's not arrogance that we didn't agree to JPC. We thought that all the measures were taken needed to look into 2G spectrum. There was no lack of interest in resolving the issue," he added.

The 2G spectrum scam has led to the arrest of a former telecom minister and is reported to have cost the government billions of U. S. dollars in loss.