Three senior MPs with business interests in the infrastructure sector who are part of the parliamentary panel on public undertakings have been formally asked to clarify whether their presence on the panel violates conflict of interest rules after their colleagues raised objections.
Efforts to resolve the issue gained momentum after one of the members, T Subbarami Reddy, at a meeting of the panel last week, questioned National Highway Authority chairman Brahm Dutt about delayed payments as well as pending payments on disputes. Reddy owns construction giant Gayatri Infrastructure that has ongoing projects with NHAI resulting in pending payments worth hundreds of crores.
According to sources, Reddy, along with the other two members at the centre of the controversy, Congress member from Vijayawada, Lagadapati Rajagopal and TDP member from Khammam, Nama Nageshwar Rao, had been asked by panel chief Kishore Chandradeo to absent themselves from committee meetings when subjects relating to highways and construction are taken up.
Rajagopal owns Lanco Infratech while Rao heads the Moducon group, both of which have contracts running into several hundred crores with NHAI. Rao and Rajagopal kept themselves away from the meeting held last week, but Reddy chose to ignore the panel chief?s directions and attended the meeting.
Objections to the presence of the three MPs in COPU were raised in the second meeting of the committee, when some members wrote to the COPU secretariat over the issue. Following the objections, the panel chief wrote to the three MPs, asking them to file declarations of interest as per Rule 52 (a) of Directions of the Speaker.
Under the rules, the Lok Sabha speaker can withdraw their membership from the committees under Rule 255 of the procedures and conduct of business in Lok Sabha, if they fail to satisfactorily answer the queries.
According to BJP?s deputy leader in Rajya Sabha, SS Ahluwalia, political parties must ensure that they do not nominate party MPs to committees where a conflict of interest would be obvious. ?These are financial committees and therefore very important. The concerned parties should be careful while nominating members to such committees, so that there is no conflict of interest?. Even if the leadership had ignored it, says Ahluwalia, the members themselves should ensure that they are not a part of such panel hearings. ?The normal practice is that he or she should at least abstain from attending such meetings where conflict of interest would become apparent?.
Parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, however, maintained that the fact that Reddy, Rajagopal and Rao were civil engineers was taken into account while nominating them to the committee on public undertakings (COPU).
With an increasing number of businessmen and industrialists making it to parliament, issues relating to conflict of interest have raised their head over the last few years though they have never been fully investigated or addressed. Many of these businessmen-MPs find themselves on finance and industry related committees, which have the authority to summon key officials in important industry related portfolios.
The present finance standing committee, for instance, has as its members, industrialist Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Andhra Pradesh business magnate YS Jaganmohan Reddy, pharmaceutical baron Mahendra Prasad and Maharashtra media leader Vijay Darda. The industry panel has perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal and Andhra textile manufacturer Gireesh Kumar Sanghi.