NEW DELHI, May 18:
Signalling a political tug of war ahead, the first meeting of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today saw a strong demand from BJP members to take up contentious AgustaWestland issue while a Congress member asked the parliamentary audit panel to examine the implementation of Prime Minister’s pet ‘Make in India’ scheme.
Trinamool Congress member Sukhendu Sekhar Roy wondered if it will not be a “conflict of interest” to discuss defence deals in the presence of Comptroller and Auditor General Shashi Kant Sharma, who was earlier Defence Secretary.
Roy noted that the CAG is examining a number of matters including some deals and has submitted a report on some of them.
He questioned how the PAC could examine the CAG reports on defence deals when Sharma was earlier Defence Secretary.
“How can the CAG sit here, when we are examining those reports,” Roy asked.
PAC Chairman K V Thomas, however, reminded him that the issue of appointment of Sharma as CAG had been settled earlier.
The Supreme Court had rejected a plea seeking quashing of appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as the CAG.
The issues were raised in the presence of Sharma, who made the customary CAG briefing in the first meeting of the newly-constituted Public Accounts committee headed by senior Congress leader K V Thomas.
In the meeting that was called to decide on subjects to be taken up during its one year-tenure, Vijay Goel (BJP) said the PAC should take up the 2013 CAG report on “irregularities” in the VVIP chopper deal.
The demand was also supported by BJD’s B Mahtab, who said that there should not be any bar on PAC taking up even those issues that are being investigated by agencies like the CBI or those pending before the courts.
Mahtab also cited that PAC had looked into CAG reports on coal block allocation.
Thomas, however, remained non-committal over the demand and asked the members to write to him about the issues that they want to discuss.
Sources said that the BJP members are keen to discuss the VVIP chopper deal issue and won’t mind going for a voting in the committee if Congress members are disinclined to take it up.
Shantaram Naik (Congress) demanded that the PAC should examine the implementation of Make in India programme of Centre.
Naik’s insistence that the PAC should examine the implementation of the Prime Minister’s pet programme appeared to be a strategy to put the BJP on defensive.
On the AgustaWestland issue, the CAG had submitted a report in August 2013, concluding that the process, from framing of quality requirements to the conclusion of the contract of the VVIP choppers, differed from established procurement procedures.
The report came before the PAC of that time, which was then headed by BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi but the PAC did not take up the issue then.
The argument of Congress members is that that the PAC Chairman could have taken up the issue then had there been anything substantial to pin point bribing of any politician.
The issue has led to a huge controversy during the recently concluded Budget Session of Parliament with members from Congress and BJP sparring over it for days.
While the government vowed to track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks so that “we can do” what “we could not do in Bofors”, Congress said it was ready to face a probe that is monitored by the Supreme Court.
The PAC has 15 members from Lok Sabha including Kirit Somaiya, Anurag Singh Thakur, Nishikant Dubey, Janardan Singh Sigriwal, Riti Pathak, Abhishek Singh, Shivkumar C Udasi (BJP), Sudip Bandyopadhyay (TMC), Prem Singh Chandumajra (Akali Dal), nominated MP from Kerala Richard Hay, Gajanan Chandrakant Kirtikar (Shiv Sena), Bhartruhari Mahtab (BJD), Neiphiu Rio (Nagaland Peoples Front) and P Venugopal (AIADMK).
Many of the newly-appointed BJP members in the panel have been aggressively attacking Congress and the Gandhi family on issues including AgustaWestland in Parliament and outside and therefore the PAC meetings in coming days are expected to generate much heat.
Naik also wanted the PAC to take up the CAG report on PPP projects to examine PPP projects.
The previous PAC, whose term ended last month, had recommended that the CAG should also have the power to examine PPP projects as public money is involved there.
Members felt that it’s an issue on which the government has to take a policy decision as private parties are against the CAG examining expenditure decisions in PPP projects.
Kirit Somaiya of BJP wanted the panel to speedily examine the issue of NPA of banks, an issue into which the previous PAC went into detail, seeking response from RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan as well as Public Sector Banks.
Sukhendu Sekhar Roy suggested that the panel should take up the CAG report on purchase of trainee aircraft in which the audit watchdog has found certain irregularities.
After the meeting, a senior member of the panel said that the committee is inclined to take up issues like the implementation of Food Security Act and the CAG report on PPP projects.
A member is learnt to have said in the meeting that it should be examined how much allocations were made to states under the 12th, 13th and 14th Finance Commission and how much of that money has really been given to them.
The member demanded that the CAG should do an audit of 81 thousand crore rupees that were allocated to states by the Commission.
Nishikant Dubey from the BJP wanted the CAG to look into the implementation part of the UPA’s Land Acquisition Act and RTI, the sources said.
He is learnt to have said that while the Finance Commission is devolving 42 per cent of gross tax revenue to states, what is its impact on Centre-state relations.
Another member said that the PAC can take up only a limited number of issues and cannot have many sub-committees to examine specific issues. The previous PAC had five sub-committees, which were looking into different issues.
The committee in its meeting today decided that all those matters being examined by the previous committee into which reports could not be filed, will be taken up by the new committee.
In his briefing, the CAG suggested 10 issues to the PAC that could be taken up. (PTI)
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