Mallikarjun Kharge appointed as new chairman of PAC

Mallikarjun Kharge appointed as new chairman of PAC 

Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge is the new chairman of the 21-member Public Accounts Committee of Parliament. Kharge replaces Congress leader K V Thomas whose term ended on April 30. The Parliamentary panel, which is headed by an opposition leader, has a majority(बहुमत) of its members from the ruling NDA.  The new committee has only two new faces while the remaining members have been renominated. Subhash Chandra Baheria and Ram Shankar, both of the BJP, have replaced their party members Richard Hay and Janardan Singh Sigriwal.

Other MPs from the Lok Sabha who are in the panel are Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Prem Singh Chandumajra, Nishikant Dubey, Gajanan Chandrakant Kirtikar, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Riti Pathak, Neiphiu Rio, Abhishek Singh, Kirit Somaiya, Anurag Singh Thakur, Shivkumar C Udasi and P Venugopal.

The Rajya Sabha MPs who are part of the panel are Naresh Agrawal, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, Bhubaneswar Kalita, Shantaram Naik, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Ajay Sancheti and Bhupender Yadav. The Committee on Public Accounts is the oldest Parliamentary committee that examines the accounts showing the appropriation(विनियोग) of sums granted by Parliament for expenditure (व्यय) of Government of India and such other accounts of autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies.

The committee also examines the Reports of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on various subjects like Civil, Defence, Posts, Railways and Taxation. Besides, the Committee examines the CAG reports on performance appraisals of various centrally sponsored schemes. The PAC has presented 1,571 reports since it became a Parliamentary committee on January 26, 1950. Since 1967, a convention(सम्मेलन)  has been established whereby an eminent leader from the opposition in Lok Sabha is appointed as its chairperson.

The PAC has been chaired by eminent Parliamentarians like Atal Behari Vajpayee, Jyotirmoy Basu, PV Narasimha Rao and R Venkataraman.

Public Accounts Committee

The Chairman is appointed by the Speaker of Lok Sabha. Since 1967, the chairman of the committee is selected from the opposition. Earlier, it was headed by a member of the ruling party. Its chief function is to examine the audit report of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) after it is laid in the Parliament.

The Parliamentary Committees

The Parliamentary Committees of the United Kingdom are sub-legislative organizations each consisting of small number of Members of Parliament from the House of Commons, or peers from the House of Lords, or a mix of both appointed to deal with particular areas or issues; most are made up of members of the Commons.