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Multi-member CAG plan still on table -Pradeep Thakur
-The Times of India

Denials notwithstanding, the government indeed has been considering the idea of turning the Comptroller and Auditor General into a multi-member body as minister of state in Prime Minister's Office V Narayanaswamy said last week.

Although the government had dropped the idea of turning the CAG into a multi-member body, agreeing with the federal auditor that the existing structure with a singular head was fine, it dusted off the proposal at the instance of the Shunglu committee.

Significantly, the important recommendation of the committee headed by V K Shunglu, who headed the CAG himself, came in April 2011 by when the auditor, with its reports on the 2G scam and the Commonwealth Games, had turned into a source of embarrassment for the government.

Soon, the cabinet secretariat wrote to the CAG seeking its comments on Shunglu panel's recommendation for restructuring the auditor.

According to sources in the CAG, the April 23, 2011 note came as a surprise to the head of CAG, Vinod Rai, and his colleagues, who had assumed that government had given up the idea of expanding the auditor into a multi-member body. In his reply to the cabinet secretariat, Rai stressed this much, saying while CAG may have a single head, it was not a monocracy and actually functioned as a multi-member collegium.

"The CAG of India is assisted by a multi-member collegium of five deputy CAGs who scrutinize and finalize the audit reports before these are approved and signed by the CAG. The government had agreed to the CAG's proposal as recently as 2008 for five deputy CAGs so as to ensure that the department is adequately equipped and is professionally qualified to handle the diverse range of audit issues needing in-depth consideration and examination," Rai said in the letter to the cabinet secretariat.

Sources in the government acknowledged that there was a re-think after the government agreed with the CAG's position that the auditor in its current form did not function as a monocracy. However, they justified the relook saying that it was provoked by CAG's transgressions of lakshman rekha. "They failed to get even their 2G maths right," a source said.

Interestingly, Rai, in his response to the cabinet secretariat, had stressed that the auditor under Shunglu, while arguing against the idea of a multi-member CAG, had said that in as many as 34 Commonwealth countries, auditor general was the singular head of the institution.

Quoting from the response that the auditor under Shunglu gave to the Justice M N Venkatachaliah-led committee for reviewing the working of the Constitution, Rai wrote, "The process of audit report goes through various levels before being finally approved by the CAG, and consequently, there is no inherent defect in the present system which calls for a collegial decision on audit findings."