The ruling Congress built pressure on the Bharatiya Janata Party to pull out its former ministers in the NDA government from the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on 2G scam since they were part of the decisions it will be probing.

Just to put pressure on it even as the Rajya Sabha adopted a motion by telecom minister Kapil Sibal for endorsing the Lok Sabha motion for the JPC, the Congress withdrew Abhishek Manu Singhvi from it and brought in Jayanthi Natarajan in his place as its nominee on the committee from the Rajya Sabha, besides P J Kurien and Praveen Rashtrapal.

Singhvi and Natarajan are both senior advocates as also party spokesmen. Singhvi recused himself on the ground that he had represented the cellular operators as lawyer in the court "and had attacked the telecom policies from 2002 to 2004 when Pramod Mahajan, Arun Shourie and Ram Vilas Paswan were telecom ministers (in the NDA government)."

Sibal announced that Singhvi was recusing himself while piloting the JPC motion. Undeterred, the BJP gave names of its former union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, a senior advocate and party spokesman, and S S Ahluwalia as its representatives from the Rajya Sabha.

Others from the Rajya Sabha on the JPC will be: Sitaram Yechury from CPI(M), Tiruchi Shiva of the DMK, Y P Trivedi of NCP, Satish Chandra Mishra of BSP and Ramchandra Prasad Singh of Janata Dal(U).

Other BJP members on the JPC from the Lok Sabha which the Congress has objected are former union ministers Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha on the ground that both had been chairmen of different Groups of Ministers (GoM) on telecom policy and as such they should recluse since their actions will also come under the JPC's scrutiny.