Mallikarjun Kharge appointed as Chairman of Public Accounts Committee

Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of Congress in Lok Sabha, on 2 May 2017 was appointed as the Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Parliament.

Kharge replaces his party's K.V. Thomas whose term has ended recently.

Apart from Kharge, the PAC has 14 members from Lok Sabha and seven from Rajya Sabha.

The members of the PAC from the Lok Sabha are Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Subhash Chandra Baheria, Prem Singh Chandumajra, Nishikant Dubey, Gajanan Chandrakant Kirtikar, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Riti Pathak, Neiphiu Rio, Abhishek Singh, Ram Shanker, Kirit Somaiya, Anurag Singh Thakur, Shivkumar C Udasi and P. Venugopal.

The members of the PAC from the Upper House in the panel are Naresh Agrawal, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, Bhubaneswar Kalita, Shantaram Naik, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Ajay Sancheti and Bhupender Yadav.

About Public Accounts Committee

• The Public Accounts Committee is a committee of selected members of Parliament for the auditing of the revenue and the expenditure of the Government of India.

• It is formed every year with a strength of not more than 22 members of which 15 are from Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament, and 7 from Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament. None of the 22 members shall be a minister in the government.

• The term of office of the members is one year.

• The Chairman of the PAC is appointed by the Speaker of Lok Sabha.

• Since 1967, the chairman of the committee has been selected from the opposition. Earlier, it was headed by a member of the ruling party.

• The PAC’s main function is to examine the audit report of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) after it is laid in the Parliament.