BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab steps down from PAC sub-panel

BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab today quit as the head of a sub-panel under the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), weeks after submitting a report on the Bofors case, which is yet to be taken up by the committee.

The PAC, headed by Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, is yet to take up the report and Mahtab was recently shifted from the Bofors panel and put in charge of a relatively insignificant sub-committee.

"I am surprised to find that for the first time, a sub-committee (on excesses over voted grants and charged appropriations) of this nature is formed," the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP said in a letter to Kharge, adding that there was no need for such a panel.

"There is no necessity to have a sub-committee on excesses over voted grants and charged appropriations. I decline to be associated with it. I would be happy if my name is deleted from this sub-committee of the present PAC," Mahtab, who will continue to remain the member of the PAC, said.

A sub-panel headed by Mahtab, the seniormost member of the PAC, had submitted a report on the Bofors gun-deal case to Kharge in April. The case is pending before the PAC for almost 27 years.

Sources said Kharge had formed just two sub-panels under the PAC this year, as compared to more than half-a-dozen panels last year.

He had also removed Mahtab from the panel, which was looking into the non-compliance of certain aspects of the CAG reports of 1989 and 1990 on the Bofors Howitzer gun-deal.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) report on Bofors is the oldest pending matter before the PAC, the main function of which is to examine a CAG audit report after it is placed in Parliament.