Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee disagreed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer to appear before the Public Accounts Committee in the 2G Spectrum scam, saying that the decision had been taken "without consulting us".

"The Prime Minister's offer to appear before the PAC was a decision taken by him without consulting us. If he had discussed it with me, I would have advised him not to offer to appear before the PAC," the senior Congress leader told a special meeting of the West Bengal PCC.

But at the same time, the Finance Minister denied a rift with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the latter's offer. "It is wrong to state that there have been differences of opinion between me and the PM on his offer to appear before the PAC. I have said though Prime Minister had offered to appear before PAC, I would not have done so," he said. "Constitutionally, the Prime Minister is accountable to Lok Sabha and not to any committee," Mukherjee said on Manmohan Singh's letter to PAC chairman Murli Manohar Joshi on December 27 offering to appear before it.

The Finance Minister said that he was a "conservative who believed in following rules of the House". "Why does a minister not appear before a parliamentary committee. The reason is simple. A minister is answerable to the House (Lok Sabha) or to the Assembly. to 543 members in the Lok Sabha or in case of West Bengal Assembly, to the 294 members." "A person is a minister because the party he represents has the support of at least 272 Lok Sabha members. and they are all behind the Prime Minister. They (ministers) are only accountable to whole House and not to a part of the House," Mukherjee said. He said there was only one precedence when Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister had appeared before the Joint Parliamentary Committee in the Harshad Mehta stock market scam of 1992.