By IANS,
New Delhi : Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal Thursday accused Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chief Murli Manohar Joshi of attempting to turn the panel into his “captive committee” and said parliamentary panels cannot be permitted to be turned into kangaroo courts by a personal agenda-driven chair.
In an indication of the growing rift between the government and Joshi, who has been re-nominated PAC chief, Bansal told reporters that the mindset with which Joshi was entering his second term as panel head was worrying.
The minister said the “document” presented by Joshi to the Speaker on the 2G spectrum issue was not adopted by PAC and was not a report.
Bansal also charged that Joshi was making a desperate attempt to use his position as PAC chairman as a comeback vehicle to revive his sagging political fortunes in the “succession war” in BJP.
He said Congress members of PAC were always cooperative and it was “only when Dr Joshi’s personal agenda to use PAC as a tool for self promotion and subserve BJP’s aim to destabilise the government became manifest that they were left with no option but to object to his authoritarian approach”.
The minister took exception to Joshi’s remarks that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was trying to convert PAC into a captive committee and said he made a “desperate bid to hijack the proceedings”.
“Having failed in his desperate bid to hijack the proceedings and get the draft authored by him adopted without the support of a majority of the members present, he left the meeting midway on April 28, 2011, to avoid the embarrassment of formal rejection of report,” Bansal said.
Joshi has maintained that he did not leave the meeting midway but had adjourned it.
Bansal said Joshi believes that members of PAC are supposed to be mere puppets.
“If Dr Joshi had his way, there would be no need for a majority support for decisions to be taken in parliament… Dr Joshi displayed scant respect for democratic institutions when he unilaterally declared that he need not go by the majority view of members and forwarded the rejected report to the Speaker,” Bansal said.
Bansal, who was accompanied by Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ashwani Kumar, said Joshi continues to say that the Speaker has no other option but to accept the report when he knows it was not put to vote.
Kumar said “by his incessant, false propaganda, Joshi had raised questions about his credibility and impartiality”.
He described as “deliberate untruth” Joshi’s allegation that UPA ministers were passing chits to PAC members.