ISLAMABAD - The previous Public Account Committee during its last five-year tenure could not retrieve even a single penny in several public money cases pending with the courts, which involved more than Rs5 trillion.
Unlike other matters resolved by the parliamentary accountability body, ex-PAC Chairman Syed Khursheed Shah had also made tall claims to recover the public money stuck in pending court cases due to alleged ineligibility of concerned defence counsels.
Although the PAC chairman had once admitted helplessness in recovering the public money yet he was confident to retrieve this amount with the help of a special team. The former parliamentary body, after failing to resolve the pending matters, including corruption and irregularities in various government departments, had decided to form a special committee on May 11, 2017 to resolve the matter. The PAC members with special planning decided to include special invitees to resolve the issue. The special members including opposition leader in Senate Aitzaz Ahsan, Federal Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid and Attorney General, Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq and Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani were to jointly reach any consensus over this matter.
It was decided to form a strategy to vacate the stay orders and other related matters on cases worth Rs5 trillion pending in different courts.
The concerned accountability department had thrice tried to hold important meetings especially on this matter but every time the meeting was postponed. The special invitees, despite the repeated calls from the concerned department, could not spare time to gather at the platform due to different other engagements. The main reason for not holding the meeting was reportedly unavailability of all the dignitaries to discuss this matter. The meeting was even formally scheduled many times but due to unavailability of special guests could not be held.
The PAC members especially chairman Khursheed Shah had raised concerns that due to unavailability of senior lawyers the pending matters could not be resolved. The PAC could also hire senior lawyers to deal with important matters.
Shah, in one of the meetings of PAC, had publically termed the PAC a toothless accountability body to retrieve most of the public money cases.
A political observer said that the PAC chairman had not even discussed this important matter in last meetings of the PAC. If the PAC chairman, he said, had termed it ‘toothless’ body than it was difficult to retrieve the money. However, the PAC resolved some of the cases but it failed to resolve the big cases.