Panaji:
Much to the Congress government's relief, the Goa Assembly session ended today without a House panel report that indicts the Chief Minister for being "a silent spectator" and permitting illegal mining being tabled.
Speaker Pratapsinh Rane said he needed more time to study the report.
The Opposition now has its guns trained firmly at not only Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, but also the Speaker, and is unliley to let up on the pressure even outside Assembly, with an eye on state elections due next year.
Manohar Parrikar, Opposition leader and the head of the Public Accounts Committee that has drafted the report, quoted the rule book to say that Mr Rane could not stop his report from being tabled. "It is not the Speaker who is supreme, the House is," Mr Parrikar contended. He also pointed to what he called a "conflict of interest." The Speaker, he said, had condoned 29 of 40 cases of delay in mining leases when he was a Minister of Mines between 1995 and 1998. The BJP leader said the Speaker thus should have recused himself from deciding on whether the report on mining could be tabled.
"Nonsense, a bunch of nonsense", said Speaker Rane, in so many words. Yesterday, in significant reprieve for the Goa government, Mr Rane had said that the report drafted by the PAC could only be treated as "a draft report." This, the Speaker said, because four out the seven members of the PAC had written to him saying they were not in favour of the report and so had not signed it. "I am studying whether the report can be tabled (in the Assembly). If the majority of the members have not signed it, then it's a draft report, not a final report," Mr Rane told NDTV yesterday.
Mr Parrikar insisted that "It is not necessary for all to sign; if they do well and good, if they don't then the report can still be tabled."
The PAC report indirectly faults Digambar Kamat, the Chief Minister, who has handled the Mining portfolio for 12 years. It refers to a collusion between politicians, bureaucrats and forest officials and finds that huge quantities of iron ore have been exported illegally from Goa; companies running mines have operated in reserved forest areas and in violation of wildlife laws.
The report was submitted by Mr Parrikar to the Speaker on Wednesday. The four members of the PAC who refused to sign it because they disagreed with its findings include three Congress MLAs and one from Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party.
The Chief Minister had said in the Goa Assembly earlier this week that not a single new mining lease was given during his tenure as Chief Minister - a statement the Opposition did not buy.