Panaji: Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Tuesday said there is no Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the alleged Rs 35,000 crore mining scam. The chief minister, however, said it was mentioned in the ‘Shah Commission’ report.
“According to Supreme Court directions and as per Chartered accountants report, we are recovering the money. We have sent letters to recover Rs 131 crore, out of which we have recovered Rs 80 crore,” Sawant said, adding the recovery process is on.
Before the assembly election in February 2022, Girish Chodankar, former chief of Congress unit in Goa, had claimed that citing the PAC report, former (late) chief minister Manohar Parrikar had misled the people on the alleged Rs 35,000 crore mining scam, “which had never happened”.
He had then challenged the BJP government to make the PAC report available in public domain. “BJP had used this non-existent report to defame Congress and win elections,” Chodankar had said.
“After making allegations against Congress over the mining scam, BJP usurped the power twice. But it failed to investigate and recover the money. Now it is clear why it did not investigate the matter and recovered the money,” Chodankar had said.
On Tuesday, Congress MLA Yuri Alemao asked the similar question to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant whether the PAC report existed, to which the latter replied in negative.
“Will the Chief Minister tell whether PAC report on mining really exists and was it a ploy to create sensation to defeat Congress in 2012 and defame mining lease holders,” Alemao questioned.
In a written reply to Alemao, Chief Minister Sawant, who also holds Mining portfolio, has said “there is no Public Accounts Committee Report on Mining as the draft report was not adopted by the committee and hence was not presented to the House as per records of legislative Secretariat”.
Meanwhile, Congress Media Cell Chairman Amarnath Panjikar has demanded apology from BJP to the people and more particularly to the ‘mining dependents’ for snatching away their daily bread and butter by stopping the mining activity in Goa, referring to the non-existing Rs 35,000 crore mining scam.
–IANS