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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Audit this overreach

Audit this overreach

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published Published on Oct 7, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 7, 2011
-The Indian Express
 
The Comptroller and Auditor General’s hubris will not tolerate any no-go areas. This august office sees itself as capable of running a shadow administration and it may just be a matter of time before the CAG demands that it be allowed to audit the selection of the Indian cricket team. As reported in this newspaper on Tuesday, the CAG asked the home ministry to submit agenda notes and minutes of the meetings of award committees so that it could examine with the finest toothcomb at its disposal the recommendations and complaints about the Padma awards and examine the process of the past 10 years. The home ministry wisely rebuffed the request, arguing that it did not entail any expenditure.
 
But let cold reason not inhibit the CAG’s ambition. And why restrict itself to Padma? Perhaps the CAG should examine the Sahitya Akademi Awards as well, which unlike the Padma carry a cash prize of Rs 50,000, and see if those litterateurs are indeed prize-worthy. And since Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is visiting, shouldn’t the CAG get cracking real-time and secure a place at the high table and look into a possible bilateral agreement to see if the numbers add up to our benefit? For, what has been evident these past months is not so much institutional overreach, than a complete trivialisation of the office of the CAG. In an attempt to grab prime-time headlines with sensationalism, we have had the less than dignified spectacle of an auditor brandishing a report that outdid Maria Sharapova’s turn on the tennis court. We have had a report on Air India that actually talked down to the government on how and how not to reform the civil aviation sector. And presumably, since nothing grabs the nation’s attention more dramatically than mindboggling numbers, CAG Vinod Rai dissuaded his colleague from seeking the opinion of the Department of Telecommunications on the quantum of losses in the allocation of 2G spectrum, lest a few zeroes be lopped off all those lakhs of crores.

The point is: the CAG has a significant constitutional function to perform — to audit the revenue and expenditure of the government with utmost fidelity to the numbers and facts at hand. It should stick to that.

The Indian Express, 5 October, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/audit-this-overreach/855798/


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