To Watch the Watch-dog of Public Finance

Abstract

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) is one of the most important constitutional authorities. The CAG is to audit all receipts and expenditures of the governments and to report their findings to the Parliament/Assembly for their accountability. The Constitution and CAG’s Act, 1971  provides total functional freedom to CAG to better serve the objective of public audit; what, when, how, and how much to audit are their prerogatives. All the stakeholders, from the Parliament and Assembly to the common people, can know only what is disclosed in these audit reports. Entrusting the entire audit process to one person without any monitoring mechanism may lead to below average performance or deliberate omission to do their mandated duties. The decreasing number of audit reports in recent years, more focus on administrative audit and evaluation of performance under the pretext of value addition/ aiding for better governance, opaqueness in non-publishing of some audit reports, less coverage of audit, and availability of less resources for audit indicate that the performance of the institution of CAG is not at the expected level. Evolving a system for annual reporting of the audit activities of CAG to the Parliament, without curtailing CAG’s independent functioning, is an immediate need for the accrual of the benefit of public audit; ensuring clean governance without leakage and misuse of public money.