President Inaugurates Centenary Celebrations of the PAC of the Parliament
Andalib Akhter/ NEW DELHI
President of India Ram Nath Kovind today said that without Parliamentary Committees, a parliamentary democracy would be rendered incomplete. It is through the PAC that citizens keep a check on the government finances.
Speaking on the occasion of inauguration of the centenary celebrations of the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament in the Central Hall of Parliament House today, President said: “ In parliamentary democracy, accountability is central to governance. Therefore, it is obvious that a committee of people’s representatives doing scrutiny of public accounts plays an important role”.
He said Parliamentary Committees in general and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), in particular ensure administrative accountability of the Executive towards the Legislature.
President said that in a democracy, Parliament is the embodiment of the people’s will. Various Parliamentary Committees work as its extension and enhance its functioning. He noted that it is a welcome division of labour as they allow the Houses to discuss and debate all issues while select groups of the Members of Parliament can devote more focus on select matters.
The Public Account Committee has been entrusted with a great responsibility of showing the virtue of prudence. It aids in finding better ways to raise the resources and, more importantly, to spend them efficiently on people’s welfare. He said that since it is the Parliament that grants permission to the Executive to raise and spend funds, it has the duty to assess if funds were raised and spent accordingly or not.
The President said that record of PAC over the decades has been commendable and exemplary. Its functioning has been praised by independent experts too. He noted that PAC has examined public expenditure not only from a legal and formal point of view to find out technical irregularities, if any, but also from the point of view of the economy, prudence, wisdom, and propriety. He said that it has no other objective but to bring to notice cases of waste, loss, corruption, extravagance, inefficiency. If more paise out of every rupee coming from honest taxpayers are reaching those in need and also for nation-building initiatives, the PAC and its members have played a large role in the process, he added.
Speaking on the occasion Vice President of India and Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu called for a wider debate on the ‘freebies’ being doled out to ensure the most effective utilization of the scarce resources in the country. He called for harmonizing the expenditure on freebies under welfare obligations of the governments with developmental needs and urged the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Parliament to examine this aspect to enable wider public discussion.
Naidu stressed on the need for wise, faithful and economical utilization of the monies granted by the Parliament to ensure that every rupee is spent for realizing the stated socio-economic outcomes, while speaking on the occasion of 100 years of PAC in New Delhi today. He said that PAC, the oldest and mother of all the Parliamentary committees is mandated with ensuring such efficient utilization of resources.
The Vice President urged the PAC to reinvent itself based on the experience of the last 100 years to more effectively ensure financial discipline in the context of the central government’s Budgetary expenditure increasing from a mere Rs.197 crore in the first Budget to Rs.35 lakh crore now, marking an increase of 17,766 times making it’s monitoring by the Committee that much more complex and challenging.