Opening the reply to the President's Motion of Thanks on behalf of the Left parties in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury, demanded the stopping of the “loot” of public money in the form of concessions to corporates and high-end taxpayers. This relief, worth several lakhs of rupees, should be used to narrow the rich-poor divide, he added. Calling upon the government to shift policy...
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CAG finds flaw in PDS beneficiary list
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found that the Food and Civil Supplies Department of the State neither conducted any survey for identification of beneficiaries nor followed the survey conducted by the Panchayat and Rural Development Department in 1998-99, to select the beneficiaries of the Below Poverty Line (BPL) for the Public Distribution System (PDS). The status as of September 2007, as per the BPL census of 2002,...
More »CAG proposes, Rural Development Ministry disposes by K Balchand
The Union Ministry for Rural Development has set up a committee to consider afresh the suggestions made by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) to strengthen the process of social auditing of expenditure under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and check corrupt practices. “Old game” Civil society leaders charge that the Ministry and the bureaucracy are at their old game of endlessly delaying the process by...
More »Accountability in spending
The late Rajiv Gandhi famously, or infamously, once claimed that only 15 per cent of the funds allocated to welfare programmes ever reached the intended beneficiaries. The rest leaked enroute, entering the pockets of an assortment of intermediaries. This is a thought that the Union finance minister must always remember, especially when he sits down to allocate funds for an assortment of subsidies and some of the high-profile spending programme...
More »Subbarao deposes before PAC by Neena Vyas
Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao on Thursday deposed before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is looking into the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the 2G spectrum allocation scandal. PAC chairman Murli Manohar Joshi said the committee had some questions to ask related to Dr. Subbarao's stint as Finance Secretary in 2007-08 just before he became RBI Governor. At a previous meeting of the PAC, another former...
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