The government on Sunday rejected as “queer theory” Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Murli Manohar Joshi’s claims that majority does not count in finalising reports of a parliamentary committee. “Decision by voting is inherent to democratic functioning of institutions,” parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said in a statement here. “Going by Joshi’s queer theory, the entire democratic system would crumble with a minority in Parliament insisting on treating their views as the decision of the Parliament,” Mr Bansal said.
The government’s attack on Dr Joshi came on a day he was re-appointed chairman of the PAC, which went into the 2G specturm allocation. And the minister’s statement was in the wake of Dr Joshi terming as unconstitutional the “rejection” of the draft report of the PAC, contending that numbers were not important and he does not have to go by majority.
Mr Bansal said, “In his anxiety to hurriedly get the PAC stamp of approval on his draft report, prepared by ignoring or twisting facts, Joshi has chosen to mislead the public by his aforesaid assertions.”
He said Dr Joshi’s actions had brought “grave disrepute” to the august chair of the PAC.
Criticising Dr Joshi for addressing press conferences after every PAC meeting and thus violating the rules of procedure, he said, “The fond indulgence with which Joshi shared the graphic details of each sitting with the media has shattered the spirit of Rule 266 which mandates that ‘the sittings of a committee shall be held in private’.”
“This breach of the established norms continued till the end with the author of the draft report choosing to present it to the media first, and only later to the members of the committee,” he said.
“It is time that instead of continuing to insist on terming the product of predetermined thought and political agenda as the report of the PAC, Dr Joshi and BJP leadership undertake some honest self-introspection and make amends for inflicting a lacerating wound on Indian democracy,” Mr Bansal said.
He accused the BJP of stifling the views of the majority in their “endeavour to malign and vilify the UPA government on unsubstantiated personal views.”
The minister cited rules of parliamentary procedure which state that all questions at any sitting of a committee shall be determined by a majority of votes of members present and voting.