The Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday postponed its meeting after it witnessed a ruckus as SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch failed to appear before the panel.
Buch was scheduled to appear before the parliamentary panel. PAC chairperson K C Venugopal of the Congress told reporters that Buch informed him on Thursday morning that she is not in a position to travel to Delhi.
He said, “In the first meeting of the committee itself, we decided to have a suo motu subject for review of our regulatory bodies. That is why we called SEBI today morning for a review of SEBI. The committee branch sends the notice to the concerned people,” he said.
First of all, he said, the SEBI chairperson sought an exemption from appearing before the committee which was denied. After that, she confirmed she and her team would be present before the committee.
This morning, she informed him that she is not in a position to travel to Delhi and he decided to postpone the meeting for another day.
BJP Leader Ravi Shankar Prasad criticised Mr Venugopal for discussing the proceedings of the PAC meeting outside or with the media and accused the Opposition members of unparliamentary conduct.
“Generally, we don’t discuss the proceedings of standing committees or PAC’s meetings outside. It pains us that the chairman of the PAC, K C Venugopal, gave a byte outside,” he said.
The BJP leader said “We were in the majority in the PAC meeting today. We objected to his suo motu decision to choose the subject, did he ask anyone? We had serious reservations about the procedure adopted in the PAC meeting.”
He said “it was strange, he (K C Venugopal) rose suddenly and walked away… PAC’s work is to discuss the report of CAG, but how did he decide to take a suo motu subject?”
Mr Prasad said “We have reports from trustworthy sources that CAG hasn’t given any paragraph over SEBI in its report… Today’s conduct of the chairperson of the PAC — the way he didn’t allow us to speak and walked away is unparliamentary and politically motivated. Hence, we are going to register our complaint to the Lok Sabha Speaker,” he added.
Parliament’s most influential committee, the PAC mainly studies whether the money granted by Parliament has been spent by Government “within the scope of the demand.” The committee is headed by a member of the Opposition.