Coal block allocation: Public Accounts Committee may take up CAG reports soon

NEW DELHI: The Public Accounts Committee, which is slated to meet on Thursday, is set to examine reports of the Comptroller and Auditor-General on coal block allocations, permission given to R Power for diverting surplus coal and the Delhi airport.

The meeting is expected to be stormy as Congress has been running down the CAG reports. An Opposition member on PAC said the meeting will "take on record" the reports and work out the process for examining the reports. The Opposition has backed CAG's findings of an estimate windfall gains of 1.86 lakh crore to over 90 private companies in the coal blocks allocation.

"The committee will formulate a questionnaire to be circulated among concerned ministers. Normally, the government is given a month to respond to the questions from the panel. We will take the process forward from there," the member, who did not wished to be identified, said.

A Congress member, however, said the panel should first finish work on the reports already under the consideration of the committee. "There is no need for any haste. Every report of CAG has to go through the PAC process and there is a lot of work pending with the committee on previous reports," said the Congress member on PAC.

Congress has unleashed an offensive against CAG. Fearing that the contents of the reports will put charges of corruption at the centre of political discourse, Congress has raised questions about CAG's impartiality.

BJP, on the other hand, has said that there is a clear case to invoke Prevention of Corruption Act against those responsible for the allocation of coal blocks.

"The report has found that it is a case of public policy bereft of public interest. This falls within the ambit of the Prevention of Corruption Act, as it is a pure and simple case of corruption," alleged former finance minister Yashwant Sinha.