Parliamentary committees and legislative scrutiny
Note
Committees, not the full House, are the real site of cross-party legislative scrutiny. They sit in private and operate outside the party whip. The three financial committees are the Public Accounts Committee (established 1921), the Estimates Committee (1950) and the Committee on Public Undertakings (1964). Twenty-four Departmentally Related Standing Committees, introduced in 1993, examine each ministry's demands for grants and its bills. Select and joint committees are constituted for particular bills. The Public Accounts Committee examines the Comptroller and Auditor-General's reports and by convention is chaired by an opposition member.
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Questions on this topic
Consider the following pairs regarding parliamentary financial committees in India and their key characteristics:
- Public Accounts Committee — Chairperson is, by convention, a member of the Opposition party
- Estimates Committee — Examines CAG reports and appropriation accounts to scrutinise public expenditure
- Committee on Public Undertakings — Examines the accounts of public sector undertakings and CAG reports on them
Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?
Explanation
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has a well-established democratic convention that its Chairperson is drawn from the principal Opposition party in the Lok Sabha. This practice underscores parliamentary accountability — the Opposition scrutinises government expenditure. Pair 1 is therefore correctly matched. The Estimates Committee does NOT examine CAG reports or appropriation accounts. Its mandate is to examine the estimates of expenditure included in the budget and suggest economies or improvements in policy execution before money is spent — a forward-looking function. Examination of CAG reports and appropriation accounts is the specific mandate of the Public Accounts Committee, not the Estimates Committee. Pair 2 is therefore incorrectly matched. The Committee on Public Undertakings (COPU) does examine the accounts of government companies and corporations, and also takes up CAG reports on public undertakings for scrutiny. Pair 3 is correctly matched. Hence, pairs 1 and 3 are correctly matched.
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