Misrepresentation of facts in HC
SHILLONG: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has castigated the Special Secretary, Law LM Sangma and other officers for giving wrong inputs regarding the committee to the High Court during the hearing of a case pertaining to Umroi Airport.
Earlier, the PAC had termed as serious the breach the stand of Law Department for presenting adverse view points on the intervention of PAC to check the anomalies in the disbursement of money for land acquisition for expansion of Umroi Airport without referring the matter either to the Assembly Secretariat or to the PAC.
Based on the affidavit filed by the law department, the High Court had made a reference about the limited role of the PAC.
The PAC on Monday summoned the officials of the Law department in this connection.
Informing this, the chairman of the House panel Paul Lyngdoh said that the officials did not have any answer to questions posed by the members regarding misrepresentation of facts about PAC unilaterally before the court.
The PAC has directed the law department to file a fresh affidavit in the High Court reflective of the powers and functions of PAC.
The PAC has also taken exception to the stand of Executive undermining the Legislature, he said.
Earlier, the PAC chairman found it strange that the matter pertaining to the activities of PAC was neither referred to the Assembly Secretariat nor to the PAC before taking up the issue in the Court.
During the hearing of the Umroi airport case on November 26, after Special Secretary to the Law department filed an affidavit on the functions and constitution of the Committee of Public Accounts of Meghalaya, the High Court had observed that the PAC has limited role to play in the matter of disbursement of compensation.
“We have carefully gone through the provisions and the one area which the Chairman of the PAC seems to have misconstrued and misunderstood by asking the officers like the Deputy Commissioner to appear before him to give the account of disbursement under Article 241(1) (2) (a) regarding money shown in the accounts as having been disbursed were legally available for, and applicable to, the service or purpose to which they had been applied or charged,” the Court had said.