Even while thanking the Lok Sabha speaker for re-appointing Mr Murli Manohar Joshi as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the BJP on Sunday lashed out at the government alleging that senior Union ministers present in Parliament had passed on slips to the UPA members while the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the 2G scam was in progress last week.
BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy, while talking to reporters in the national capital, said, “We would like to thank the Lok Sabha Speaker for re-appointing Joshi as the chairman of the PAC.”
On the allegation that slips were passed on to UPA members, Mr Rudy, apart from calling it a bad precedent, said, “Never in the history of parliamentary democracy we have seen that while a meeting of parliamentary committee is going on, senior ministers are sitting there and passing slips to members.” He added, “They should be ashamed of what they are doing.” Reports suggest that while the PAC meeting was on in parliament on April 28, senior ministers P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, P.K. Bansal and V. Narayanasami were also spotted in the building.
Mr Rudy also regretted the reported remarks of Union parliamentary affairs minister P.K. Bansal that the draft PAC report on 2G be consigned to the dustbin. He said, “Such remarks from a senior minister is unfortunate. We expect that he apologises to Parliament for whatever he had said.”