Lucknow, Sept 2 (ANI): Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and head of Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Murli Manohar Joshi, on Sunday came out in strong defence of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), under fire from the Congress party over his report on the alleged coal scam.
Interacting with media here, Joshi accused Congress of concealing the scams by targetting the CAG, and claimed it was a step towards ending accountability from the parliamentary procedure.
"From the Congress side continuous efforts are being made that the government's corruption does not get exposed before the people. Whenever a constitutional body probes into the cases of corruptions, allegations are levelled against it," Joshi said.
"First of all honorable Prime Minister said that the investigation is wrong and the estimate is wrong. Then Digvijay Singh alleged that CAG has political ambitions and he is doing it to gain political favour. I want to request to PM that he should observe the constitutional processes. It is written that CAG will audit and PAC will review that and then report will be given. Till then no comments can be made. You can't accuse CAG," he added.
Joshi alleged that instead of extending support in inquiry into these scams, efforts were being made to end it.
"Neither any comment, nor any allegation could be levelled against the CAG. CAG has not levelled any allegation against anyone. It has simply said that some private companies benefitted from the process through which allotments were made. It made it clear that the process was not right resulting into losses," he said.
Drawing references from the past, Joshi recounted the incident when Krishna Menon had to apologise to the CAG for making comments against it.
"In 1960 the then Defence Minister Krishna Menon made a comment against CAG in which a contempt notice was brought, and the then Speaker ruled that no comment should be made, leading to which the minister apologised," he said.
Joshi further said an inquiry should be conducted to probe why coal was blocked in the mines for six to seven years. (ANI)
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