Mukul Roy appointed PAC chairman in Bengal Assembly

Kolkata: Senior leader Mukul Roy has been appointed the chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in the state Assembly.

Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay appointed him as the chairman of the committee stating that "he has vast experience in Parliamentary Affairs and he belongs to the legislative party of BJP in Opposition. He is the competent person to head the present committee of public accounts of this House".

BJP, however, staged a walk out soon after the Speaker announced Roy's name as the chairman of PAC claiming that the rule has been misused to appoint him as the committee's chairman. The reason — an Opposition MLA usually gets appointed in the post and Roy recently joined Trinamool Congress.

Roy, who is the BJP MLA from Krishnanagar Uttar Assembly constituency, had joined Trinamool Congress in June. He is still officially an MLA of the BJP.

With all 20 nominations for becoming members of the PAC getting validated in the month of June itself, the chances of election to induct members in the committee was avoided and it remained completely on the discretion of the Speaker whom to be appointed as the chairman of PAC. The list of validly nominated candidates also contains names of Balurghat's BJP MLA Ashok Lahiri and Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari. Protesting against the decision, the BJP announced boycotting of all the committees.

State Panchayats and Rural Development minister Subrata Mukherjee, who headed PAC for 15 long years, said: "Roy is definitely their man (BJP's MLA) inside the House until and unless he resigns. He remains as the MLA of the party in whose symbol he had won the election. Usually, one from the Opposition becomes a chairman and here also, the tradition has been followed."

When asked that the BJP has stated Roy's appointment to the post as "unethical" and threatened of boycotting all other committees, Mukherjee said: "It is completely their matter where they want to remain as chairman of other committees or not."

Names of the chairpersons of 13 committees and 26 standing committees for the year 2021-22 have also been announced on Friday, which was the last day of the ongoing session of the state Assembly. There are committees, including Committee on Estimates and Standing Committee on Labour, whose chairpersons are BJP MLAs.

Trinamool Congress MLA and former PAC chairman Manas Ranjan Bhuniya also stated that there was nothing unethical in it as Roy is a senior leader, a former Union minister and also senior in terms of age. "He is also a BJP MLA and not from TMC or Congress," Bhuniya said. "It is the practice in all Assemblies in the country and Lok Sabha to appoint an MLA from the Opposition as PAC chairperson. I would like to state that the tradition has not been followed this time in the state Assembly," Adhikari said. He also claimed that Roy's name was not among the six BJP MLAs whose names were nominated as members of the committee last month. No BJP MLA was proposer for Roy. "So, it is not right that seven from BJP had filed nominations. We six had filed the nomination and if we had a seventh candidate, then there would have been an election," Adhikari said.