ISLAMABAD: The continued absence of Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) Akhtar Buland Rana from sessions of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) evoked a sharp response from committee members on Tuesday.

Director General Audit Maqbool Gondal, who attended the PAC meeting in the AGP’s stead, told members that the AGP was in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on official business.

The AGP was scheduled to attend the meetings of the AJK PAC on December 8 and 9.

PAC Chairman Syed Khurshid Shah took serious notice of AGP Rana’s absence during Tuesday’s meeting.

According to a notification issued by the National Assembly Secretariat’s PAC wing on December 1, the committee was scheduled to examine the audit report of the Ministry of Communications on December 9.

Mr Shah remarked that the AGP did not take the PAC seriously, something which has forced the committee to adjourn its proceedings several times.

On Tuesday as well, the chairman adjourned proceedings without examining the relevant audit paras.

PAC member Shahida Akhtar Ali told Dawn that AGP Rana was deliberately avoiding committee, even though the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC)– where a reference is pending against Rana for allegedly availing benefits greater than his entitlement – had directed him to appear before the PAC. She said it was obvious he did not heed even the directions of the SJC.

Akhtar Buland Rana claims he was in AJK on ‘official business’

Another PAC member, Mohammad Junaid Chaudhary, said Mr Rana’s actions were contemptuous. He said the PAC chairman can ask him to appear, but the AGP had disrespected both the parliament and the SJC by refusing to appear.

“There is one solution to this problem,” said Rana Afzal Hussain, another member of the committee.

“[PAC] should be given more powers and authority to summon defiant officials,” he said, adding that while parliament maintained its supremacy, parliamentary committees appeared powerless.

Talking to Dawn, AGP Rana denied that the SJC had ordered him to appear before the PAC. He said in its last meeting of November 27, the SJC had asked him whether he would withdraw a letter, ordering audit staff not to appear before the PAC, which he had duly withdrawn.

The letter was circulated earlier this year in August, when Mr Rana asked all his staff to stay away from PAC proceedings unless its chairman was replaced with a non-PPP member.

The AGP’s stance was that the PAC could not take up audit reports from the PPP’s time in power since the chairman, Mr Shah, was also a senior member of that government.

He said that grade 18 and above officers from the audit department did attend Tuesday’s meeting to assist the committee with the scrutiny of audit reports.

He also said that as the Auditor General for AJK as well, he was constitutionally bound to attend meetings of the AJK PAC as well.

“I also had to attend a seminar on December 8 and 9 in Muzaffarabad and therefore could not attend Tuesday’s PAC meeting in Islamabad,” he said, adding that the PAC could proceed with its business even in his absence.

Tariq Naqash adds: Talking to journalists in Muzaffarabad, the AGP said that his stance was that Mr Shah should not chair PAC meetings when the forum had to discuss reports pertaining to the period when the PPP was in power and he was serving as a federal minister.

“I do not say he will make illegal decisions, but there is a question of clash of interests… Also the established international legal norms say that no one can be the judge of his own cause,” he said.

The AGP said that he had not attended PAC meetings for three to four months, but then realised that he was not doing justice to taxpayers’ money. He claimed that he wrote to the National Assembly speaker and asked him to consider the matter, but he had not heard back from the speaker yet.

“When there was no reply after the lapse of three months, I made it clear that the auditor general’s office does not deem it fit to bring its reports to this forum,” he said.

“We will now attend PAC meetings, but we will keep on repeating our viewpoint,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn December 10th , 2014