-The Telegraph   A Comptroller & Auditor General’s report, tabled in the Assembly today, has pulled up the state for poor implementation of a central government scheme for rural roads, pointing to substandard work, fraudulent payments to unscrupulous contractors and serious financial irregularities. Only nine per cent of rural habitations were connected with all weather roads under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) between 2005 and 2010, the five years that saw three...

-The Times of India   The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed unhappiness over the progress of investigations into irregularities in the purchase of intelligence equipment and recruitments by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), which was set up in 2004 to provide crucial data on threats to the nation. A bench of Justices R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik asked solicitor general R F Nariman about the status of the probe into...

-The Business Standard   Worried over allegations of corruption in many government programmes, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has requested the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to audit all the schemes under his ministry. Ramesh met Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in the state secretariat today, the last day of his three-day visit to the state. “To maintain transparency, I have requested the CAG to engage special Auditor Generals in each state to...

-The Business Standard   Asking questions does not amount to passing judgements Just as correlation does not establish causation, asking questions does not amount to passing judgements. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) is an important constitutional office that has a role to play in improving governance. However, going beyond one’s brief can always harm an institution in the long run and be counterproductive. An auditor’s dharma is to see if...

The centre of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam has shifted from Suresh Kalmadi to Sheila Dikshit, the high-profile Delhi Chief Minister who brought the Congress electoral victory three times consecutively in the capital. And it’s not only because the BJP is demanding her head in return for offering BS Yeddyurappa’s in Karnataka. Two reports on the conduct (or misconduct) of the Commonwealth Games — one by VK Shunglu and another by the...