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Kelkar report to be made public today
By Alok Mukherjee
After facing a barrage of criticism on the ``consultation papers'' released earlier, the two task forces were ready with the final reports last week. And, press conferences were scheduled for Sunday and Monday last, to deal with one report on each day. But the conferences were cancelled on Friday on the ground that the Bharatiya Janata Party's national executive was being held on Monday and Tuesday.
When it was pointed out that Dr. Kelkar, who is Adviser to the Union Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, had nothing to do with the BJP national executive, the official response was that the Minister would be busy at the party meet and would not be able to receive the reports. Nonetheless, Mr. Singh did find time on Monday to receive the report of the Naresh Chandra Committee on corporate governance.
Dr. Kelkar's press meets were rescheduled for today and tomorrow. But, early in the day came notice of cancellation because the Finance Minister was "unwell." The event has now been rescheduled for Friday, provided Mr. Singh resumes duty. However, what is apparently holding up the release of the Kelkar reports are the BJP's "internal recommendations" on matters of taxation. They are being drafted by a committee headed by the party general secretary, Rajnath Singh.
Consequently, there was a move to release the BJP's report on tax concessions first so that the party could claim to have "influenced'' the Kelkar task forces not to do away with the concessions relating to the middle class. However, the Rajnath Singh committee, which met today to finalise its critique of the Kelkar recommendations, decided to postpone its final report. It will meet again on January 5, 2003. A member of the committee said that the party would like to study the final report before giving its views.
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