(IMAGE: Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch. Photo: Securities and Exchange Board of India (GODL-India), GODL-India via Wikimedia Commons)
New Delhi: The parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting was postponed on Thursday (October 24) after Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch cited “personal exigencies” to not be present.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs accused PAC chairperson K.C. Venugopal of being politically motivated in deciding the subject matter of the meeting.
Venugopal told reporters that the committee was informed this morning that she cannot travel to Delhi, due to which the meeting was postponed.
“The first meeting of the committee, we decided to have a suo moto review of regulatory bodies. That is why this morning we had called the regulatory body, SEBI, for review as a regulatory body. We had sent the notice to the concerned people. Today [the] SEBI chairperson sought an exemption from appearing in the committee which we denied,” he said.
“After that she confirmed that she and her team will be present. But [this] morning, at 9:30 am, we got a communication from the SEBI chairperson and other members of SEBI [that] because of a personal exigency, she is not a position to travel to Delhi. Today morning she informed that she is not in a position to travel. Considering it as a woman’s request we decided to postpone the meeting to another week.”
The PAC was expected to focus on the conflict of interest charges levelled against Buch by the Congress as well as US-based shortseller Hindenburg Research.
The agenda of the PAC meeting today included a briefing by audit, followed by oral evidence of the representatives of the Ministry of Finance (Department of Economic Affairs) and SEBI on the subject “Performance Review of Regulatory Bodies established by Act of Parliament”. The agenda also included oral evidence of the representatives of the Ministry of Communications, Department of Telecommunications and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on the same subject.
Shortly after the meeting was adjourned, former Union minister and BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad said to reporters that the PAC had decided the subject of the meeting without taking their views, and that the performance review of regulatory bodies is not under the PAC’s ambit.
“Usually we don’t discuss proceedings of standing committees or PAC meetings outside. We are saddened that PAC chairman Venugopal came out and gave a byte and stated everything. We were in the majority at the PAC meeting today. We objected to their suo moto decision to choose the subject on their own initiative, did they ask anyone? You had taken our views, but the final list that was made we did not know about it. We were going to raise objections to this. We had serious objections to the procedure followed in the PAC meeting about the selection of the subject,” he said.
Prasad said that BJP MP Nishikant Dubey had already raised the matter with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, and this was to be raised in the meeting. But none of the NDA MPs were allowed to speak.
“Neither was Nishikantji heard, Anurag Thakur, or me or Jagdambika Pal. Our objection was how this subject was decided. It was strange, he (Venugopal) gave his speech and suddenly got up and left. We are saddened by this. We respect the chairman and the committee. But the members need to be respected as well. So many senior members who are in majority who have been chief ministers, Union ministers are sitting-13 members were sitting. And he walked out,” said Prasad.
“He said that it has been decided suo moto to review regulatory bodies. We have so many standing committees. The finance committee sees SEBI and RBI, the IT committee sees TRAI. Every standing committee looks into its regulatory bodies. So how did you decide to review performance of regulatory bodies suo-moto?”
Prasad said that the NDA MPs would meet Speaker Birla as Venugopal had acted in an unparliamentary manner, and showed that his actions were politically motivated.
“Your job is to discuss the CAG report, but how did they decide to choose the subject on their own initiative? We have reports from reliable sources that CAG has not given any paragraph on SEBI in its report. The PAC chairman’s conduct today is unparliamentary and politically motivated. We are saying with full sense of responsibility that today’s conduct of the chairperson, the way he adjourned the meeting, did not allow us to speak, the way he suddenly walked out shows he has extraneous political considerations. So, we are going to register our complaint with the Lok Sabha Speaker.”
Buch has been at the centre of a series of allegations after US short-seller Hindenburg Research – whose report on the Adani group last year alleged price rigging of company shares – accused the SEBI chief and her spouse of having held “stakes in both the obscure offshore funds used in the Adani money siphoning scandal,” citing “whistleblower documents” on August 10.
A series of allegations have also been levelled against Buch by the Congress, which have been denied by the SEBI chief as “incorrect, motivated and defamatory”.
This article was originally published on The Wire on October 24, 2024.
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