The government on Thursday turned the heat on the NDA and other parties by mooting a JPC on Parliament stalling by the opposition over their demand for a JPC to probe the 2G scam.

“Look at the scam that has been caused due to obstruction of the Parliament, it would have cost the country this is around Rs. 70,000 crore. May be we should have JPC on that," telecom minister Kapil Sibal told reporters at the sidelines of India Telecom summit 2010 on Thursday.

“Remember there are such important legislations waiting to be passed in this country which are going to impact the common man. The opposition parties are not concerned about that.”

Taking a dig at the main opposition party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for stalling parliament for the 20 successive days on the JPC demand, the telecom minister told, “They are looking at the general elections in 2014. They are not concerned about the telecom sector. For them obstruction of democracy is the mantra.”

The government has ruled out any JPC probe on the telecom scam. Instead, the government is advocating a debate in the house on telecom scam.

In fact,  PRS Legislative Research, a Delhi-based think-tank has said the record of the current session of Parliament is the worst in 25 years. “Thus far, Lok Sabha has worked only for 6 percent of the scheduled hours,” C.V. Madhukar, director of PRS Legislative research wrote in the Indian Express.

Many bills in Parliament were passed without any discussion. Madhukar mentioned, “In this session, the Supplementary Demands for Grants were passed without discussion. This hurried passing of legislation and demands for grants can have serious policy costs which are far in excess of the cost of running of Parliament.”

The telecom minister also said telecom sector should not be viewed as a source of revenue. “If we look telecom sector in this way of revenue generating sector, we would be giving gross injustice to them,” Sibal said.

However, he also promised a level playing field for all telecom operators.