‘PAC reports not placed appropriately in public domain but govt listens to us’

Public Accounts Committee Chairperson and Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury lamented on Thursday that its reports are often not placed appropriately in public domain but declined to blame the government, saying it has generally followed the tradition of accepting the parliamentary panel’s recommendations.

‘Government listens to us. This has been generally the tradition. The PAC is also a kind of Parliament but there are no allegations traded here,’ he told reporters.

After the Lok Sabha elections later this year, a new PAC will be constituted after the newly elected MPs take oath.

Chowdhury, who is the leader of the Congress in the outgoing Lok Sabha, in a release shared some of the highlights of the PAC’s reports on a variety of issues but declined to comment on queries related to specific projects.

‘It is a continuous process. Our job is to highlight shortcomings and to tell the government to correct,’ he said.

Asked if he was satisfied with the response of the government to the PAC’s reports, Chowdhury said the job of the parliamentary panel is to work as a watchdog and if he says he is satisfied, then it may may be “misconstrued” that he was subscribing to the views of the govt.With the job of the PAC chairperson conventionally going to the main opposition party, the Congress MP noted that it was possibly the first time that any head of this panel -- which scrutinises public expenditure of various govt ministries -- served five consecutive times through the entire term of a Lok Sabha.