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.

Parliament has announced the ministries whose Demands for Grants will be discussed in detail in the Lok Sabha (after April 12 when Parliament reconvenes).  They are:

Defence

Rural Development

Tribal Affairs

Water Resources

External Affairs

Road Transport and Highways

Together these ministries have asked Parliament for a total of  Rs 289,938 crore (Rs 175,772 crore for Defence alone) – which is slightly over a quarter of the total expenditure budgeted by the Central Government for 2010-11.

The Rajya Sabha does not discuss demands for grants but has announced a list of ministries whose functioning it will review after the recess.  They are:

Home Affairs

Tribal Affairs

Defence

Power

Chemicals and Fertilizers

Petroleum and Natural Gas

Youth affairs and Sports

Women and Child Development

Consumer affairs, Food and Public Distribution

Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation