Bhubaneswar, May 29: The Congress today accused BJD legislators of not allowing Public Accounts Committee chairman Bhupinder Singh to hold a meeting of the panel as it would have exposed financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore.

Opposition chief whip Prasad Harichandan today told mediapersons that the committee had detected excessive expenditure by various departments, which had not taken approval of the state Assembly. The committee was also looking at the faulty port policy under which plots had been given to various industrial houses at throwaway prices.

He said a sub-committee of the Public Accounts Committee was to be constituted at its meeting yesterday but the BJD MLAs disrupted the proceedings. BJD MLA Prabhat Biswal, backed by the ruling party’s deputy chief whip Sanjay Dasburma, protested that they had not received prior information about the setting up of the sub-committee. The eight BJD members of the 12-member committee, headed by the leader of the Opposition, walked out of the meeting.

Harichandan said: “The government is scared of facing a sub-committee. Last year, the sub-committee had established that the government had spent Rs 9,716.74 crore without the approval of the Assembly.”