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Burial awaits CAG's 100-odd reports on misuse of govt money

George Iype in New Delhi

The 1998-99 Comptroller and Auditor General reports tracing how various ministries and departments of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government spent the state money have gone waste due to the untimely dissolution of the 12th Lok Sabha.

The CAG had completed preparing some 100-odd audit reports with an estimated cost of nearly Rs 60 million much before the 13-month old Bharatiya Janata Party government collapsed.

But the detailed reports investigating the manner in which the Central government departments have wasted public exchequer's funds in the past one year have been buried in the CAG store rooms.

These reports can not now be released without they being tabled in Parliament.

CAG officials said the department had in fact packed the 100 audit reports to be presented to the Lok Sabha after it re-assembled for the second part of the Budget session on April 15.

"But the submission of these reports could be entered in the list of businesses in the Lok Sabha because of the political crisis. We waited for the political uncertainty to be over, but then the government fell and the house was dissolved," an official told Rediff On The Net.

"Hundreds of officers and other staff in the CAG have worked for the last one year to complete these reports. But our efforts have gone waste as the caretaker government will not take any initiatives to check the omissions and commissions of various departments," he added.

Officials say the CAG has been forced to dump its one-year's labour due to the archaic CAG Act which stipulates that its reports should first be submitted to Parliament before releasing it for public scrutiny.

As per the Act, Parliament exercises control of the state exchequer through the CAG. And since the CAG is the only official means for the government to take stock of how budgetary allocations and funds for various socio-economic projects are (mis)used by all Central ministries, departments and public sector undertakings.

CAG officers say they face innumerable hurdles during the preparation of these exhaustive reports every year. Accessing documents from ministries which is engaged in distributing money from the public exchequer for public use is said to be extremely difficult as top bureaucracy is often uncooperative.

The CAG also engages itself in a series of meetings and discussions with the government's Public Accounts Committee and the committees of the Public Sector Undertakings.

Once the CAG reports are presented in Parliament, their copies are sent to the President and the ministries cocerned and departments "to defend their use of public funds" and take corrective actions.

But since the CAG is just empowered to point out the irregularities in each and every department, over the years no ministry has taken any concrete and definite steps to stop the misuse of funds.

For instance, officials said, the 1998-99 CAG report has mounted a scathing attack on the country's international carrier, Air India. The heavily-loss making airline spent nearly Rs 2.8 billion for introducing a performance linked incentive plan for its employees that included the AI top brass, including the former managing director Brijesh Kumar.

Though the CAG in its 1997-98 report too had pointed out the discrepancies of the AI employees' scheme, the civil aviation ministry has taken no action either to spike or to overhaul it.

A senior official said the CAG wants the government to immediately amend the Act to ensure that its reports are released to the public every year whether the elected Lok Sabha completes its term or not. The CAG also wants the government to re-modify the Act to ensure that governments every year implement its investigative reports and recommendations.

"The law that the reports should be submitted to the Lok Sabha can not be mandatory as political uncertainty has in the past three years forced successive governments to give scant regard to the CAG reports," the official stated.

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