Panaji, Oct 7 (Inditop.com) An explosive Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report unravelling a Rs.3,500 crore mining scam in Goa will not be tabled in the legislative assembly Friday, the second and last day of the monsoon session. The day’s agenda does not list the report.
The report was submitted on Wednesday to Speaker Pratapsingh Rane Wednesday PAC chairman by Manohar Parrikar of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who is also the leader of opposition in the assembly.
Parrikar, while interacting with the media Wednesday, had hoped that the report would be tabled Friday. On the same day, Rane cautiously said: ‘I have just received it. I will go through the report. We are in a democracy, so the majority view should be taken into consideration.’
Four legislators of the ruling alliance out of the seven-member PAC had not signed the report, Rane said.
The four legislators – three from Congress and one from the Nationalist Congress Party – had refused to sign the report Tuesday.
They said they needed time to study the document, which severely indicts the government.
The PAC report charges several state government agencies including the department of mines, the pollution control board, the forest department and the police, besides central government agencies like the ministry of environment and forests, the Indian Bureau of Mines and the Director General of Mines Safety with turning a blind eye to illegal mining in Goa.
The role of Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, who has been mines minister for a decade now, is also under cloud, although the report does not directly name him.
Speaking in the Goa legislative assembly Wednesday, soon after submitting the PAC report, Parrikar obliquely laid the mantle of the illegal mining scam on Kamat’s head.
‘Does the chief minister not want to change the situation in the mines department at all? Does he not want to punish anyone guilty? Any third person would take inference that he (Kamat) is involved,’ Parrikar said.
‘When he was the chief minister, exports rose from 16 tonnes to 54 tonnes…Production is thrice now. What is legally extracted is 30 million tonnes (of ore). It is perfectly legal, while 20 million tonnes is not legal,’ Parrikar had said.
Goa exported nearly 54 million tonnes of iron ore in the last fiscal, out of which nearly 7 million tonnes is allegedly extracted illegally.
PAC – CAG reports are no more than TOILET PAPERS if it goes against CONGRESS. Governors and Speakers too joined the team to COVER-UP the CONGRESS’s LOOT.