-The Economic Times It was in the mid-eighties that former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi said if the Centre released a rupee for the poor, only 15 paisa reached them. Decades later, not much has changed. With leakages, delays, and uneven implementation of welfare schemes like NREGA, blunting benefits to the poor, the rural development ministry is proposing to put in place a system to assess the effectiveness of the schemes even...

A team of auditors from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India will travel on select trains originating and terminating at Sealdah and Howrah stations to ascertain whether their introduction was at all necessary. Nearly all these trains were introduced by Mamata Banerjee during her tenure as railway minister between 2009 and May 2011. According to sources in the CAG, this exercise is part of a thematic review on 'Introduction of...

-The Business Standard Delhi's power tariff hike needs a thorough probe Since the privatisation of power distribution in Delhi in 2002, the average domestic electricity tariff has seen a rise of 107 per cent. It was Rs 2.50 a unit in 2001-02 and – after last week’s increase of 24 per cent with effect from this month – has gone up to Rs 5.17 a unit. This latest hike comes after another...

Bhubaneswar : A year after the CBI probed into the irregularities across six districts of Orissa, a special performance audit of the implementation of the NREGS programme by the Comptroller and Auditor General has found misappropriation of funds through ghost workers, uneconomic execution of the works, delay in payment, and irregular maintenance of records still plaguing the scheme. The Supreme Court last year ordered a CBI probe following a writ petition...

By repeatedly decrying the CAG and trying to malign the person occupying that Constitutional office, the UPA government is weakening an important pillar of democracy and lowering its own credibility Admitting that there is a great deal of uncertainty and a perception of policy paralysis in the government these days, a senior Cabinet colleague of the prime minister recently observed that it was being created by the activities of (Comptroller and...