PAC will consider PM's offer, says Joshi

Dr Murali Manohar Joshi,chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, told newsmen at a hurriedly called press conference that the PAC had received received a letter from Prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh offering to depose before the committee, if required and 'appropriate decision would be taken at appropriate time.'

"Some newspapers have carried the reports that CAG Vinod Rai had been summoned by the PAC to despose before it on 2G spectrum scam. This is a wrong impression and I would like to correct this. He is our expert and he guides us on such matters. He is a member of the PAC and attends the meeting in that capacity," Dr Joshi said in opening remarks.

Replying to a question whether the committee was satisfied with his explanations, Dr Joshi said that CAG is a honourable member of accounts committee and he gave us three models of calculating the losses incurred in the 2G scam.

"The CAG follows the international practices followed 179 other nations. The minimum loss is around 57,666 lakh thousand crore and the maximum loss is 1.76 lah thousand crore. He (Rai) told the committee that CAG goes into implementation of the policies but does not go into policies and how they were set up. So far 27 meetings of PAC have been held on various
issues and 8 of them between July and December after I took over as the chairman from Gopinath Munde. Next meeting of the PAC would he held in January 2011

," Joshi said.

Answering another question whether the PAC is only going through accounting procedures, Dr Johsi said it was going beyond that and is also going through performance and implementation of the public money.

When asked if the PAC could summon a minister? Joshi said "We cannot directly summon a minister but we can tell the Lok Sabha Speaker and if the speaker takes a decision on this issue, the minister could appear before the committee. As far as former telecome minister is concerned, without naming A Raja he said that the committee has received huge amount of files from PM's office and other sources we would go through them and take a decision. If required he would be intimated, We will do things according to the provisions of PAC."

CAG Vinod Rai told PAC that they had started from 2003 onwards because that was time when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had issued the guidelines for telecom sector. " We are not bound by the CAG report. If required we can go back to 2001 as well. If we feel that we should go back to 2001 then we would do the same," Joshi indicated.

He parried questions whether there would be any need for JPC once they submit a report. " I am not going to answer any question about what government says, what Congress says or what the opposition parties say," former president of BJP said. He refused to give any tentative time by when the PAC would be ready with its report on 2G spectrum scam.