Action unlikely against Thomas Isaac over breach of privilege

Thiruvananthapuram: Even though Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan has referred the privilege notice against Finance Minister Dr T M Thomas Isaac to the Assembly Ethics Committee, he is unlikely to face any action.

The nine-member ethics panel of the Kerala legislature has six members, including the chairman from the LDF, and three members of the UDF.

The two options before the panel are either recommend to the Speaker that there is no need to initiate action against the minister based on the explanation given by Isaac or just submit the recommendations of the panel. Even though the recommendations can be placed before the House, the government can turn the decision in its favour as the LDF has a clear majority in Assembly.

The Privileges and Ethics Committee of the Legislative Assembly is set to scrutinise his alleged procedural lapse in divulging a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).

The complaint filed by a UDF MLA states that Isaac disregarded the rights of the Assembly as he revealed the details of a CAG report even before it was tabled in the Legislative Assembly.

As reported earlier, Speaker has desisted from taking action on the complaint filed by Congress MLA V D Satheesan and instead forwarded it to the House panel to take a final call, a rather unusual move.

The Speaker said there are certain important issues mentioned in the complaint of the opposition MLA and other serious matters pointed out by the Minister in his reply and both need to be addressed by the committee.

The members of the Ethics Committee are A Pradeep Kumar (Chairman), V K C Mammed Koya, John Fernandez, D K Murali, E T Tyson and George M Thomas, all from the LDF. The UDF representatives are V S Sivakumar, Mons Joseph and Anoop Jacob.

The issue

Even if Isaac had made the report public after party's permission and seeking legal opinion, he would have landed in a soup as he could not make a clear distinction between the final and draft report. The CAG usually prepares a report after raising many doubts with the government and seeking their reply.

At the outset, the CAG sends the draft report to the government. Since the draft report is seen by the finance secretary and other officials, the document has less confidential value. The final report is printed in a private press after seeking an affidavit that the document will not be leaked out. Subsequently, it is handed over to the finance secretary.

After informing the finance minister and chief secretary, the finance secretary sends the report to the Governor seeking his permission to place it before the Assembly.

The finance minister tables the report when the Assembly session is convened. Isaac violated these norms and made the excerpts of the report public which led to the privilege notice against him.

Earlier, Isaac had conceded that the CAG report he found fault with was not a "draft" but the final one. Nonetheless, he said his earlier insistence that it was a draft was based on his "absolute conviction" that it was indeed a draft.

Following the controversy, Isaac had said he was prepared to face any punishment for breach of parliamentary privilege, but ruled out resigning over the developments.