Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai on Wednesday rejected reports that there was pressure from Parliament's Public Accounts Committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi to expedite audit work of 2G spectrum allocation and said no findings were ever shared with the PAC.
A fresh controversy broke out in the 2G case on Tuesday with the surfacing of a letter which suggested that Parliament's Public Accounts Committee chief Murli Manohar Joshi had called up a CAG official to press for expediting auditing work into spectrum allocation.
The Congress on Friday hit out at the Election Commission after it rejected allegations over irregularities in the Haryana assembly polls, saying if the poll panel's goal is to 'strip itself of the last vestiges of neutrality', then it is doing a 'remarkable job' at creating that impression.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Parliament's Public Accounts Committee Chairman Murli Manohar Joshi hit out at Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal for questioning the Comptroller and Auditor General report on the 2G Spectrum scam. He said that Sibal's comments showed both the PAC and the CAG in poor light and said that the telecom minister's conduct was unbecoming.
The PAC had called the chiefs of the three defence services for a hearing after a CAG report pointed out irregularities in the supply chain management of rations by Canteen Stores Department. Singh appeared before the PAC headed by senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi at around 1100 hrs and senior Army officials made a presentation of management of rations in the Army.
"I have worked with him for sometime and it would be in the fitness of things if he were to resign. Some of our MP's did not attend the meeting called by him. I request him publicly to quit otherwise we would have to talk to the Speaker," Swaraj said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday wrote to the Public Accounts Committee expressing his willingness to appear before the panel which is looking into the 2G spectrum allocation scam. Following up his announcement at the Congress plenary session, Dr Singh made the offer in his letter to PAC Chairman Murli Manohar Joshi. Addressing the concluding day of the Congress plenary, Dr Singh had said he would be 'happy to appear' before the PAC though there was no precedent.
'The approach today is, instead of giving loans to 100 MSMEs, let us give one loan to a big-ticket corporate.' 'And so many of these big fish deceived the banks and the banks are in the doldrums now with high NPAs.'
Congress President Sonia Gandhi is understood to have discussed with senior party leaders the secretiveness adopted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about his offer to face the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that came as a big surprise to her at the plenary session in New Delhi on Monday.
Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party members on Friday walked out of the Goa assembly protesting the speaker's action of not considering the Public Accounts Committee's report on the illegal mining in the state.
The panel has questioned the purchase of properties with 'avoidable' expensive appurtenances by the MEA for envoys posted abroad.
The PAF plans to induct 250 JF-17s in the coming years.
Public Accounts Committee Chairman Murli Manohar Joshi on Saturday made a fresh attempt to make the panel take up his controversial report on the 2G scam that had questioned the role of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
Under fire following Comptroller and Auditor General report indicting her and her government for irregularities in the Commonwealth Games projects, Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit on Saturday said action will be taken if any wrongdoing is found by the Public Accounts Committee looking into the issue.
Dr Murali Manohar Joshi, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has demanded that Home Minister P Chidambaram should be dropped from the cabinet for his alleged misdeeds in leaking the PAC report, sending wrong data of most-wanted persons to Pakistan, his role in the 2G spectrum scam and for the rise in fuel prices when he was the finance minister.
Unmindful of 'rejection' of the draft report on 2G scam by United Progressive Alliance members, Public Accounts Committee chairman Murli Manmohar Joshi on Saturday submitted it to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and insisted that it be tabled in Parliament.
Thanks to an over-enthusiastic Murli Manohar Joshi, whose anti-Congress leanings became a little too obvious, the Congress with a little help from friendly parties has scuttled the report of the Public Accounts Committee on the 2G spectrum scam. This has made sure that it cannot be tabled in Parliament, even though it has been leaked through the media.
The draft report of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament is understood to have asked the UPA government to quantify the loss to the exchequer from the 2G scam and recover it from companies that benefited from this.
Radia, chairperson of Vaishnavi Corporate Communications and Tata, chairman of Tata sons Limited, have been asked by the PAC to appear before it on April 5 at 11 AM and 3 PM respectively to give 'oral evidence' on the subject 'recent developments in the telecom sector including allocation of 2G and 3G spectrum'.
The statement by Public Accounts Committee Chairman Dr Murali Manohar Joshi -- about the offer of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appear before the PAC to clarify his position in the 2G spectrum scam -- has shocked senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, whose report on a presumed loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore in 2G spectrum allocation created a storm in Parliament, will appear before the Public Accounts Committee on Monday.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, whose report on a presumed loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore in 2G spectrum allocation created a storm in Parliament, will appear before the Public Accounts Committee on Monday.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, speaking on the second day of the Congress plenary meet on Monday in New Delhi, said the PM's post should be above suspicion and that he is ready to appear before the Public Accounts Committee in the 2G spectrum scam even though there was no precedent to do so.
In a sudden development, senior Parliamentarian Jaswant Singh has resigned as chairman of the prestigious Public Accounts Committee, which he had refused to quit when he had a bitter parting of ways with the Bharatiya Janata Party four months ago. His resignation raised questions on whether there was any possibility of a rapprochement with the BJP, but the 71-year-old leader ruled that out, saying he did not take the action under 'any pressure' or with 'some calculation'.
PAC Chairman K V Thomas, however, remained non-committal over these demands.
Top Pakistani officials are refusing to disclose how and on what the country's powerful spy agency Inter Services Intelligence spent a whopping Rs 5.55 billion allocated to it during 2007-08. "This is highly sensitive information and hence I can't talk about it at an open forum," Finance Secretary Salman Siddiqui told the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly or the lower house of parliament.
In a snub to Public Accounts Committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi, Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar has returned the controversial draft report filed by him on the 2G Spectrum allocation. "The draft report on the 2G issue has been returned to the PAC Chairman", sources in Parliament's PAC said on Tuesday.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders are not on talking terms with expelled leader Jaswant Singh after he refused to resign from the chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament, Union minister Murli Deora claimed on Friday. The Petroleum and Natural Gas minister, who is heading a high-level delegation to London, said senior BJP leaders, including L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Murali Manohar Joshi, are not on talking terms with their former colleague.
Expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh found an ardent supporter in former vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat today when the latter praised his book on Pakistan-founder M A Jinnah and also appeared to reprimand the party for asking him to quit Parliament's Public Accounts Committee chairman's post.
A meeting of the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday witnessed a verbal slugfest between its chairman Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and MPs from the ruling National Democratic Alliance as the Congress leader sought to raise the issue of COVID-19 vaccination drive for discussion in the panel, sources said.
Jaswant Singh's expulsion from the the Bharatiya Janata Party has caused further embarassment for the party as Speaker Meira Kumar had just appointed Singh as chairman of the prestigious Public Accounts Committee of the Lok Sabha.
Politics is going to get even more sharply polarised in the weeks and months to come. And the 2G scam is not going to die down so easily, says Neerja Chowdhury
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer to present himself for questioning appeared to have weighed in on the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee with the PAC giving him a clean chit in its draft report, while indicting arrested former telecom minister A Raja and seeking re-tendering of the 2G licences he had given for a song, causing a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore (Rs 1.76 trillion) to the exchequer.
Anil Ambani, chairman of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and a former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, was made to wait for over an hour by the Murli Manohar Joshi-led Public Accounts Committee before he was called in for intensive questioning on the 2G spectrum issue. He pleaded that since the name of his company and some key officials figure in the chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation on the massive scam, he would not like to say anything.
Criticising the police for arresting an SUV driver and blaming him for the incident, the high court said, "Mercifully, you have not challaned the rainwater for entering into the basement."
Agarwal handed over his resignation from the state Assembly to UP Vidhan Sabha Speaker Sukhdev Rajbhar on Saturday morning. The resignation of Agarwal, who was also the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has been accepted, the Speaker told UNI in Lucknow.
Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has called leading industrialists, including Ratan Tata and Anil Ambani, and corporate lobbyist Niira Radia to appear before the panel in connection with the 2G spectrum scam which it is probing.
Murali Manohar Joshi, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said on Thursday that no decision had been taken regarding the offer made by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to appear before the PAC for questioning in the 2G Spectrum scam.
Journalists, whose names have cropped up in the 2G scam tapes, will face the Public Accounts Committee, PAC Chairman Murli Manohar Joshi has said.
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