Senior ministers passed slips to UPA MPs at PAC meet: BJP

New Delhi, May 1: BJP today claimed that senior Union ministers, present in Parliament, passed slips to UPA members during the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last week on the 2G scam issue which eventually ended in chaos.

"Never in the history of Parliamentary democracy we have seen that while a meeting of Parliamentary Committee is going on, senior ministers are sitting there and passing slips to members," BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy told reporters here.

He said it was for the first time that the independence of the Parliamentary committee proceedings was tarnished in this manner by ministers.

"I think it is a bad precedent. They should be ashamed of what they are doing," Rudy said.

Reports said that senior ministers P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, P K Bansal and V Narayanasamy were present in Parliament when the meeting of the PAC was underway on April 28.

At the same time, Rudy welcomed the re-nomination of senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi to the post of Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

He said Joshi was a veteran Parliamentarian who has always upheld democratic traditions and shown maturity.

"We would like to thank the Lok Sabha Speaker for re-appointing Joshi as the Chairman of the PAC," Rudy said.

The BJP spokesman termed as "unfortunate and shocking" Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal''s remarks that the draft PAC report on 2G scam be thrown in the dustbin.

"Such remarks from a senior minister is unfortunate. We expect that he apologises to Parliament for whatever he had said," Rudy said.

PTI