On the last day of the recently concluded Assembly session, Speaker J.C.D. Prabhakar appointed 11 committees, including the Privileges Committee, the House Rules Committee, and the Public Undertakings Committee. Although, as per legislative rules, it is standard practice for the government that takes office when a new Assembly is constituted to appoint these committees, there has now been a stir over the two committees that have been formed.
When speaking to some informed sources in the legislative assembly circles regarding this, they said, “Once a new government takes office, it is customary to appoint sixteen committees, including the House Rules Committee, Estimates Committee, Public Accounts Committee, Committee on Public Undertakings, and Privileges Committee. The Speaker will serve as the chairperson of the House Rules Committee. Both the Chief Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will be members of this committee.
Similarly, the Leader of the Opposition or an opposition member recommended by them will serve as the chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee.
The Public Accounts Committee is an important committee empowered to examine and monitor the government’s revenues and expenditures. Just as in state legislatures, there is also a Public Accounts Committee at the Parliament level in the central government. In order to maintain transparency in government finances, it has been a convention to entrust the leadership of this committee to the opposition.
At present, MP K.C. Venugopal of the Congress party is the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee at the parliamentary level.
For all other committees, the chairpersons are legislators from the ruling party. Members from all parties are included as members.
In this situation, the appointment of Vilathikulam MLA Markandeyan as the DMK representative on the Rights Committee among the 11 committees currently appointed by the Tamil Nadu government has sparked controversy.
Because a few days ago, after being arrested for saying at a public meeting, "I will break Chief Minister Vijay's bones," the ruling party side requested that the matter be referred to the privileges committee for inquiry. The Speaker announced that once the privileges committee is constituted, the matter will be sent to the committee and appropriate action will be taken.
Even so, he himself has now been appointed as a member of the same privileges committee. The controversy is that he is a member of the committee that will investigate the complaint against him.
The highlight and the puzzling part here is that he was appointed as a member of that committee only after the order was issued to refer the complaint against him to the privileges committee.
We spoke about this with former Speaker Jayakumar.
''The authority to appoint legislative committees rests entirely with the Speaker. His decision will be final. You could even call it his prerogative. So no one can question that. At the same time, there may be discomfort and awkwardness in placing someone who has to face an inquiry in a position where they have to conduct that inquiry. Questions are unavoidable too. It is only the Speaker who needs to think about this'' he said,
'Isn’t it the convention for the chair of the Public Accounts Committee to be from the opposition? During the previous DMK government, Selva Perunthagai held that post. Now, following the same pattern as the DMK, the TVK government has appointed a member of the Indian Union Muslim League,' we also asked.
''That is the tradition. In the central government, this tradition has been respected and followed for ages. At the same time, they say that as per the assembly rules, it is not mandatory. Would DMK people let go if they found little loopholes like this? That is why they broke the tradition in the previous regime. The government that has come in today will oppose them strongly on everything else. But in matters like these, where they sneak in through the side, they prove that they and we are the same—that’s all,'' he said.