One of our earlier posts (read here) tackled the question of whether the Public Accounts Committee could summon ministers or not. According to a direction of the speaker, a Minister cannot be summoned by a financial committee. There are no specific procedures for the Joint Parliamentary Committees mentioned in the rules. However, according to the Directions by the Speaker general rules applicable to Committees shall apply to all Committees, though specific directions can be given for some committees (read here). In other words, the general directions for all committees would be the same, unless a specific direction was given relating to a particular committee. In the Joint Committee of Stock Market Scam and Matters relating there to, a specific request was made to the Speaker, Lok Sabha by the Chairman, JPC on 20th May, 2002 for permitting the Committee to call for written information on certain points from the Minister of Finance and Minister of External Affairs. The Speaker accorded the necessary permission on 1st June, 2002. Consequently, the Minister of Finance (Shri Jaswant Singh), the Minister of External Affairs (Shri Yashwant Sinha) and the former Finance and External Affairs ministers (Shri P. Chidambaram and Dr. Manmohan Singh respectively) testified before the Committee. Read the text of the report here.
Between 2002-06 the average number of sitting per year (May - April) was around 19 but since 2006 the average has dipped to around 11 sittings per year. The average number of committee sittings is around 15 per year from 2002-10. The committee met 22 times in 2002-03 while it only met 5 times in 2007-08. The average duration per sitting has been more or less equal since 2002. The committee has been spending 1 hour 20 minutes on an average on each sitting. 
* Data rounded off to nearest hour * Data calculated from May to April every year. * Data taken from the Public Accounts Committee Website & PRS.
