Madhabi Puri Buch skips House panel meet; hearing deferred amid protests

The meeting of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday was postponed after Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, who was slated to appear before the panel, conveyed her inability to attend it.

 

The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) members of the PAC challenged the postponement of the meeting. They lodged their protest against panel chairperson and Congress leader K C Venugopal’s “unilateral” decision of rescheduling the meeting with the Lok Sabha speaker.

 

After the meeting was adjourned, Venugopal told reporters that the committee received a communication from Buch at 9.30 am that she and her team will not be able to appear before the panel due to “exigencies”.

 

“Considering a woman's request, we thought it better to postpone today's meeting for another day,” Venugopal said. Another opposition member said Buch’s conduct, where she informed the committee about her decision to skip it, amounted to contempt of the parliamentary panel.

 

The panel had earlier asked Buch to appear before it after it had picked ‘performance review of regulatory bodies established by an Act of Parliament’ as one of the 161 subjects that it will examine in 2024-25. At the Thursday's meeting, apart from Buch and Sebi officials, it was also slated to examine the representatives of the Ministry of Communications, Department of Telecommunications and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

 

After Thursday’s meeting was cut short, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and panel member Ravi Shankar Prasad reiterated that the PAC's purview is to consider Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports. “We know from reliable sources that the CAG has made no mention of Sebi. This entire conduct is un-parliamentary,” he said, accusing Venugopal of not allowing NDA members to speak at the meeting.