A Slow Death The systemic slowdown of the CAG’s recent audits

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The systemic slowdown of the CAG’s recent audits

03/03/21, 5:20 PM

COMMENTARY / GOVERNMENT

A Slow Death

The systemic slowdown of the CAG’s recent audits HIMANSHU UPADHYAYA AND ABHISHEK PUNETHA 01 March 2021

An inordinate number of reports have been delayed over the last few years, especially during the tenure of the former CAG Rajiv Mehrishi, who was in office from 25 September 2017 to 7 August 2020. MOHD ZAKIR / HINDUSTAN TIMES

At the time the Constitution of India was being framed, BR Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee, stressed that he wanted the Comptroller and Auditor General of India to be a completely autonomous institution. “I am of the opinion that this dignitary or o!cer is probably the most important o!cer in the https://caravanmagazine.in/government/systemic-slowdown-cag-recent-audits

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Constitution of India,” Ambedkar said in the Constituent Assembly in May 1949. “He is the one man who is going to see that the expenses voted by Parliament are not exceeded, or varied from what has been laid down by Parliament in the Appropriation Act. If this functionary is to carry out the duties—and his duties, I submit, are far more important than the duties even of the Judiciary—he should have been certainly as independent as the Judiciary.” Ambedkar went on to add that the institution of the CAG had not been given the same independence as the judiciary and that he felt it “ought to have far greater independence than the Judiciary itself.” Nonetheless, the CAG, whose role is to audit the executive branches of the central and state governments, was conferred constitutional status. The institution’s ambit includes examining “the legality, validity, regularity, propriety, economy, e!ciency and e"ectiveness of financial management and public administration,” as per Indian law. While often identified with the individual who heads it, who is also referred to as the Comptroller and Auditor General, the CAG is a massive institution with over forty thousand employees across India. Historically, the CAG has often brought out crucial information related to corruption scandals, such as those around the Bofors deal, the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 2G-spectrum case and the irregularities in allocation of the coal blocks for mining, among others. Besides looking at irregularities, the CAG has also thrown light on governance matters and decision-making processes. In recent times, however, the independence of the institution has been in question. Over the last few years, a systemic slowdown of the CAG’s audits is evident. A large number of audit reports for the financial year 2018–19 and a significant number of audit reports for the financial year 2017– 18 are still not in the public domain, even as we enter March 2021. Such delays are often caused by the late tabling of reports in https://caravanmagazine.in/government/systemic-slowdown-cag-recent-audits

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legislatures (https://thewire.in/government/state-cag-audits-fy2019) by governments. However, an analysis of the time taken by the CAG in preparing the reports in recent years shows a worrying trend. Traditionally, the CAG has finalised about eighty percent of reports within 12 months of the closing of the financial year. This is not the case anymore. We looked at audit reports pertaining to state legislatures since 2011–12, which are uploaded on the CAG’s website, and categorised them by the time it took to prepare them. We found that an inordinate number of reports have been delayed over the last few years, especially during the tenure of the former CAG Rajiv Mehrishi, who was in o!ce from 25 September 2017 to 7 August 2020. Mehrishi made headlines, in February 2019, when he gave a clean chit to a deal between the Indian and French governments to acquire Rafale fighter jets. The Congress alleged conflict of interest, saying that Mehrishi had supervised the deal himself while he held the position of finance secretary in the government. The CAG’s performance reports, released by the Indian Audit and Accounts Department, provide an overview of the department’s activities. Going by these reports, more than a hundred audit reports are prepared every year for tabling in the state legislatures. But the performance reports do not mention which financial year the audit reports were pertaining to. Thus, these performance reports do not indicate the extent of delay in the preparation or tabling of reports. We relied on the CAG website to compile a list of the audit reports tabled in state legislatures according to fiscal year. Our study was made more di!cult by an unavailability of information and ine!ciency in keeping public records. Ideally, the last pages of audit reports should carry the dates on which the CAG signed them, but these dates were not provided in the digital versions of many reports. The audit-reports archive should also provide the dates on which the https://caravanmagazine.in/government/systemic-slowdown-cag-recent-audits

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reports were shared with respective state governments. While the CAG website has begun sharing this information recently (October 2018 onwards), this was not the practice in past years. Thus, that information was also not found for many reports. In cases where we found the date of presentation of respective audit reports in the assemblies from the CAG website or the state-assembly website, and where that date was within 12 months of the closure of the fiscal year, we concluded that the reports got finalised within 12 months. For some of those audit reports that were tabled after more than 12 months, we relied on the date of tabling in the legislature to ascertain that the finalisation of the report did not take more than 15 months or 18 months. We sought this information through a right-to-information request at the CAG o!ce, but did not receive a reply within the prescribed time period of 30 days. When we filed an appeal, the request was disposed of with a short response. “The information sought is huge and voluminous and is spread over many o!ces (smaller than 100) pan India basis in IA&AD,” the response from the public-information o!cer at the CAG said. “As per relevant provisions of the RTI Act, PIO is not required to collect and collate the information and then furnish to the RTI Applicant.” But even without this information, the contrast between the data before 2016–17 and after is quite telling.

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For the year 2011–12, we were able to access 125 audit reports pertaining to state legislatures on the CAG website. For 121 audit reports, we had at least one date available—the date of signing the audit report or tabling the reports in respective legislatures. At least sixty of these audit reports were finalised within 12 months. For the rest, the available dates do not indicate whether these were finalised within 12 months or not. But, on the basis of their date of tabling in state legislatures, we can safely conclude that the finalisation of these reports took no longer than 18 months from the closure of the financial year. For the year 2012–13, we were able to access 120 audit reports pertaining to state legislatures on the CAG website. Out of these, for 116 audit reports we managed to find either the date on which they were signed by the CAG or the date when they were tabled in legislatures. At least twenty-eight of these audit reports were finalised within 12 months. For the rest, we can safely conclude that the https://caravanmagazine.in/government/systemic-slowdown-cag-recent-audits

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preparation of these audit reports did not go beyond 18 months from the end of the fiscal year. We accessed 96 audit reports from the CAG website tabled in state legislatures pertaining to the year 2013–14. Seventy-five audit reports had either the date of signing or the tabling of the report. The dates indicated that 72 of those audit reports were finalised within 12 months and the remaining three were finalised within 15 months. For the year 2014–15, we found 118 audit reports pertaining to state legislatures on the CAG website, out of which 94 were finalised within 12 months, while a further 15 were finalised within 15 months. The preparation of four reports took 15 to 18 months. For another five audit reports, we could not find the date on which the CAG signed them, but the dates of the reports’ tabling showed that their finalisation did not take more than 18 months after the financial year ended. For the year 2015–16, the CAG website shows details of 131 audit reports tabled in state legislatures. Out of these, the date of finalisation was available for 90 reports, and the date when they were tabled in the legislatures for 25. Out of these 115 reports, 97 were finalised within 12 months and 15 were finalised within of 12 to 15 months, while the preparation of three reports took between 15 and 18 months. For 16 audit reports, while we could not ascertain when they were prepared, the dates when they were tabled in legislatures indicated that the period did not extend beyond 18 months after the financial year. For 2016–17, we were able to access 127 audit reports pertaining to the state legislatures from the website. For 120 of these audit reports, the date of finalising the audit report was available. For another seven audit reports, we looked at the dates when they were tabled in their

https://caravanmagazine.in/government/systemic-slowdown-cag-recent-audits

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respective legislatures. Out of these 127 audit reports, 59 were finalised within the 12-month period. The finalisation of 37 audit reports took 12 to 15 months, for 18 reports the time taken was 15 to18 months and for 13 reports the finalisation took 18 to 24 months. From the year 2017–18, when Mehrishi took charge, the delays worsened drastically. For this financial year, the CAG website provides us information regarding 99 audit reports pertaining to state legislatures. The dates of finalisation for these reports tell us that not a single report was prepared within 12 months. The preparation of 16 of the reports took 12 to 15 months, while 24 were prepared in between 15 and 18 months. It took 18 to 24 months to finalise 40 of the reports, and the timeline for the finalisation of 19 audit reports went beyond 24 months. From the year 2018–19, only 32 audit reports pertaining to state legislatures are available in the public domain, as of mid February 2021. None of these available reports were finalised within 12 months, or even 15 months. Twenty-eight audit reports were finalised within a time period of 15 to 18 months and it took between 18 and 24 months for the finalisation of four audit reports. The availability of several reports in the public domain remains pending. In his memoir, published in 2019, CG Somiah, who held the o!ce of CAG from 1990 to 1996, wrote about how he turned around the delays in the finalisation of audit reports by the institution. “When I took over as the eighth CAG of India, a number of States had a history of delayed finalisation of the annual accounts, which, in turn, delayed the laying of annual audit reports before the State Legislatures,” he wrote. “This was remedied by the time I demitted o!ce.” What was achieved by Somiah stands completely overturned in recent times. Mehrishi’s tenure is an indication that citizens now need to

https://caravanmagazine.in/government/systemic-slowdown-cag-recent-audits

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keep a watchful eye on the performance of this watchdog institution. HIMANSHU UPADHYAYA (/AUTHOR/1045) is an assistant professor at Azim Premji

University Bangalore. ABHISHEK PUNETHA (/AUTHOR/51498) is an independent researcher and a former

Girish Sant Memorial Fellow. KEYWORDS:

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