The comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) on Wednesday took strong exception to telecom minister Kapil Sibal’s trashing its report on the 2G spectrum scam, stating that the move was against parliamentary norms and amounted to contempt of the House.
Last week Sibal had trashed CAG’s findings that had found a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer due to Raja’s allocation of licences/spectrum to nine firms in January 2008. In a bizarre mathematical calculation Sibal had said that there was no loss to the exchequer though Raja may have committed procedural irregularities which is under investigation. The CAG’s report is currently under the examination of the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.
In a statement issued late in the evening, CAG said, ?As per para 1.12 of the Rules of Parliamentary Procedure, when any matter is under the consideration of a Parliamentary committee and the committee is holding its sittings for that purpose, no person including an MP should make or publish a statement or comment about that matter. Making comments on the matter is highly improper and may even amount to the contempt of the House”.
The statement said that owing to this rule CAG didn’t make any comment on media reports on comments made by others on the report of the 2G spectrum allocation, as it was under discussion in the PAC.
Interestingly, earlier in the day PAC chairman Murli Manohar Joshi also said that Sibal’s remarks on the CAG’s assessment of the 2G spectrum scam were ?improper? and had hurt the dignity of the auditor. Joshi said that the committee members had asked him to take appropriate steps to ensure that such instances do not recur. ?The sense of the committee was that Sibal?s remarks were improper, against propriety and an attack on the dignity of PAC and CAG,? Joshi said.
He said the forum of the committee was available to the minister to make any observation or suggestion on the report of the CAG on alleged irregularities in the 2G spectrum allocations. Defending the CAG, Joshi said the auditor had never said his estimates on presumptive losses to the exchequer were final. ?The CAG had only mentioned three different figures based on three different models to calculate the presumptive loss. It had never said the report was final,? he said.