New Delhi: Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) led by senior Congress MP K C Venugopal on Thursday moved ahead with initiating privilege proceedings against Chief Secretaries of six states, including Karnataka a…

New Delhi: Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) led by senior Congress MP K C Venugopal on Thursday moved ahead with initiating privilege proceedings against Chief Secretaries of six states, including Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, for skipping a scheduled briefing to review pre-matric and post-matric scholarship for Scheduled Caste students.Sources said the Chief Secretaries of UP, Karnataka, Punjab, Odisha, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were intimated about the meeting days ago but none, except two, sought exemption from appearance. PAC asks Railways to fix gaps in passenger amenities within a month, submit action-taken reportThe PAC also did not give any relaxation to the two Chief Secretaries who approached the panel for relaxation on Wednesday.Venugopal, sources said, has briefed Speaker Om Birla about the conduct of the Chief Secretaries and urged him to initiate privilege proceedings. The panel has viewed the absence of the Chief Secretaries as a contempt of Parliament.The PAC has called the least performing states for a review but the Karnataka Special Secretary told the panel that the zero beneficiaries for the pre-matric scholarship mentioned in an audit report was a typo error committed by the Comptroller and Auditor General.The panel noted that post-matric scholarship expenditure in Karnataka fell from Rs 175 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 65 crore in 2021-22 and then rose to Rs 703 crore in 2023-24. It asked whether students were paid late in later years.It also noted that central share to Karnataka fell from Rs 422.90 crore in 2024-25 to Rs 334.22 crore in 2025-26 while enquiring whether it was because fewer students applied or was it because the state’s share was paid late. The multi-party committee also referred to the CAG finding in 2018 that Karnataka had used scholarship funds for portal maintenance and stationery. On Uttar Pradesh, the panel noted that 5.41 lakh post-matric students were paid late between 2017 and 2021 and of them, 57,098 of them got it after three years and 206 after four years. It told the state government that a scholarship paid after the course ended does not keep a student in college. It took umbrage at the Punjab government for not paying pre-matric scholarship to 2.72 lakh students though Rs 6.14 crore was available for payment. 

Source: Deccan Herald