The U T I drama which has been hogging limelight in the Parliament House for the last few days has entered an interesting phase as the government and the Opposition agreed on Friday

that an existing joint parliamentary committee could look into the Unit Trust of India controversy, the two sides reached the agreement in Speaker G M C Balayogi's office.

In the afternoon of 03/08/2001, Speaker Balayogi informed the House about the meeting where Prakash Mani Tripathi, chairman of the parliamentary committee probing the stockmarket scam, was also present; the Tripathi commmittee will now look into the UTI scam as well.

The Speaker said the old JPC will look into all issues relating to UTI. Earlier, the Opposition had demanded a new JPC into UTI and during zero hour in the Lok Sabha on Friday, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan rejected the proposal, but he suggested that the existing JPC could look into the new controversy.

Balayogi suggested the matter could be discussed in his chamber and the meeting in his chamber began within minutes.

The Opposition-government agreement on how the UTI 'mismanagement' is to be probed is expected to end the tussle which has disrupted this Parliament session several times, on 02/08/2001 Thursday evening, an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha was defeated by a voice vote in the Lok Sabha, but a noisy Opposition did not allow Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha to complete his reply to the debate.

Earlier in the week, Sinha faced similar disruptions in the Rajya Sabha and today Congress chief whip Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi again raised the issue in the Lok Sabha, he said since the government too was concerned over the fate of the small investors and wanted to punish the guilty, it should "graciously accept" the demand for a JPC.

The party's deputy leader in the House Madhavrao Scindia and other Congress MPs supported the demand. CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee too called for a probe by an "appropriate body".

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said the government shared the concern about small investors and the terms of reference for the Parekh committee already mentioned the interests of the small investors. He said the existing committee could look into the UTI as well.

The MPs could discuss the issue with its chairman and decide if the same committee could investigate the new developments. Similarly, the committee could let it be known if it wanted amendments in the terms of reference to take up the UTI issue.