Anisur Rahman Dhaka, Apr 12 (PTI) A top Parliamentary committee in Bangladesh is mulling action against senior officials of the anti-graft commission, including the former chief of the panel, for defying its order to appear in the House. The Parliamentary standing committee today accused senior officials of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) of contempt of the House after they refused to appear before the panel for a hearing.
“They will have to explain before the next meeting of the (parliamentary) committee under what law they defied the parliamentary summon,” Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, Chairman of the standing committee on public undertaking, told reporters. Mainuddin Khan Badal, another member of the committee, said that under the British and Indian parliamentary practices the former ACC chairman, the two commissioners and the secretary of the anti-graft body could even be arrested for their refusal to appear before the committee today as they were ordered earlier.
On April 7, the parliamentary committee in a letter asked the former ACC chief, retired army general Hassan Mashhud Chowdhury and three other officials to appear before the panel along with the commission’s latest annual report, audit report and documents on its activities. However, they have refused to appear before the parliamentary body, saying the summons are “beyond jurisdiction of the committee” as they were accountable to the president of the country.
