Comptroller and Auditor General: India

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This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.

Pending cases

2016

The Times of India, Sep 07 2016

Pradeep Thakur & Rajeev Deshpande

Bofors report PAC's oldest `pending' file

Some 27 years after the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) politically explosive report on the Bofors gun purchase indicted the Rajiv Gandhi government and set the stage for a famous opposition victory in 1989, it remains the oldest “pending“ report with the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The scandal over kickbacks in the deal continues to await closure as the defence ministry is yet to submit its `action taken notes (ATNs)' on the national auditor censuring the cost of the Swedish artillery gun and the manner in which its competitors were disadvantanged.

The PAC is Parliament's oversight mechanism to keep a check on all government expenditure and is assisted by the CAG through its audit reports. Innocuously titled `report mber 2 on the contracts with number 2 on the contracts with Bofors for purchase and licence prodcuction of 155 mm gun system and counter trade', the CAG's report is still hanging fire, a PAC sub-committee led by BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab found. The final audit comments were finalised in 2009, a decade after the Bofors report was prepared and around the time UPA-2 assumed office.

The Bofors report was part of more than 800 ATNs pending with several ministries as of July 31, 2016, a PAC report said. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) leads all departments with the highest number of 198 pending ATNs, followed by the defence ministry with 163 and the railways with 100.

Apart from India's first defence scandal that claimed a government, more recent scams examined by the CAG such as procurement of Tatra trucks and the Adarsh housing society scandal remain stuck in the innards of the defence ministry awaiting ATNs.

The CAG's Kargil war report of 2001, a review of procurement during Operation Vijay, is also pending with the PAC. The auditor had raised points of financial impropriety in defence contracts worth over Rs 2,000 crore.

The CBDT has failed to file at least 198 ATNs and most of them relate to incorrect allowance of business expenditure to builders, developers and prominent business houses resulting in loss to the exchequer.

The PAC had taken up for review several CAG reports pointing out substandard work in laying of lines and in land acquisition among others.