Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T17:00:08.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Going Beyond Mere Accounting: The Changing Role of India's Auditor General

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2013

Ronojoy Sen
Get access

Extract

In early 2013, India's then comptroller and auditor general (CAG), Vinod Rai, while delivering a speech at Harvard University's Kennedy School, wondered whether his office should be confined to being “mere accountants.” That this question could be raised in a public forum, and that too outside India, spoke to the transformation in recent times of Rai's stature and the office that he held. The winds of change were reflected in the Indian Supreme Court's rejection in 2013 of a public interest litigation challenging the authority of the auditor general, who is a constitutional authority, to conduct performance audits of the government. Significantly, the Court ruled, the “CAG is not a munim [accountant] to go into the balance-sheets. The CAG is a constitutional authority entitled to review and conduct performance audit on revenue allocations . . . and examine matters relating to the economy and how the government uses its resources.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 801 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Hindu, October 1, 2012.

2 Fali S. Nariman, “A Question of the Right Balance,” The Hindu, August 15, 2007.

3 Constitution Assembly of India, Volume VIII, Constituent Assembly Debates, accessed September 10, 2013, http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol8p11a.htm.

4 Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Performance Audit Report on the Issue of Licences and Allocation of 2G Spectrum by the Department of Telecommunications Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, accessed September 10, 2013, http://cag.gov.in/html/reports/civil/2010-11_19PA/Telecommunication%20Report.pdf.

5 For the monetary amounts in the CAG reports, the conversion rate is the one prevailing at the time the reports were published. For the other amounts, the rate is the one prevailing at the time this article was prepared for publication in September 2013.

6 Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Report No. 7 of 2012–13 for the Period Ended March 2012—Performance Audit of Allocation of Coal Blocks and Augmentation of Coal Production (Ministry of Coal), accessed September 10, 2013, http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/Our_Products/Audit_Report/Government_Wise/union_audit/recent_reports/union_performance/2012_2013/Commercial/Report_No_7/Report_No_7.html.

7 Comptroller and Auditor General of India, A Report on the Preparedness for the XIX Commonwealth Games 2010, accessed September 10, 2013, http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/Our_Products/Other_Reports/Study_Reports/commonwealth.pdf.

8 Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Report No. 6 of 2011-12 for the Period Ended March 2011—Performance Audit of XIXth Commonwealth Games 2010, accessed September 10, 2013, http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/Our_Products/Audit_Report/Government_Wise/union_audit/recent_reports/union_performance/2011_2012/Civil_%20Performance_Audits/Report_No_6_CWG/Report_no_6_CWG.html.

9 Pradeep Thakur, “Our Capacity to Put Up with Corruption Was Going beyond Bounds. Now the Line Has Been Drawn,” The Times of India, May 20, 2013.

10 Sengupta, Mitu, “Anna Hazare and the Gandhian Ideal,” Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 3 (2012): 593–601CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Report No. 7 of 2012–13 for the Period Ended March 2012—Performance Audit of Allocation of Coal Blocks and Augmentation of Coal Production (Ministry of Coal), accessed September 10, 2013, http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/Our_Products/Audit_Report/Government_Wise/union_audit/recent_reports/union_performance/2012_2013/Commercial/Report_No_7/Report_No_7.html.

12 NDTV, “Govt Auditor (CAG) Vinod Rai's Speech at Harvard Kennedy School,” accessed September 10, 2013, http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/govt-auditor-cag-vinod-rai-s-speech-at-harvard-kennedy-school-327674.

13 Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Great Cleansing Act,” The Indian Express, August 20, 2012.

14 Raghu Karnad, “The Gloves Are Off,” The Caravan, September 1, 2011.

15 Constitution Assembly of India, Volume VIII, Constituent Assembly Debates, accessed September 10, 2013, http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol8p11a.htm.

16 Chandrasekharan, R. K., The Comptroller and Auditor General of India: An Analytical History 1947–89 (New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1990), 1:52Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 1:xxiii.

18 Kumar, Vijay, The Comptroller and Auditor General of India: A Thematic History 1990–2007 (New Delhi: APH Publishing, 2008), 45Google Scholar.

19 Comptroller and Auditor General of India, “Allocation under Grant No. 41 of the Union Budget—IA&AD for the Year 2013-14,” accessed September 10, 2013, http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/about_us/Budget/CAG_budget_info.pdf.

20 National Audit Office, “About Us,” accessed September 10, 2013, http://www.nao.org.uk/about-us/.

21 National Audit Office, National Audit Office Annual Report and Accounts 2012–13, accessed September 10, 2013, http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ANNUAL-REPORT-2013_WEB-1.pdf.

22 U.S. Government Accountability Office, “GAO at a Glance,” accessed September 10, 2013, http://www.gao.gov/about/gglance.html.

23 National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, A Consultation Paper on Efficacy of Public Audit System in India: C&AG – Reforming the Institution, accessed September 10, 2013, http://lawmin.nic.in/ncrwc/finalreport/v2b1-11.htm.

24 The Times of India, July 20, 1989.

25 Kumar, op. cit. note 18, 886.

26 Ibid., 863.

27 The Indian Express, February 10, 2011.

28 Ramaswamy Iyer, “Role of CAG,” Letters, Economic & Political Weekly, October 6, 2010.

29 Ackerman, Bruce, “The New Separation of Powers,” Harvard Law Review 113 no. 3 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 727.

30 Khosla, Madhav, The Indian Constitution (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar, 40.

31 Thakur, op. cit. note 9.

32 Ramaswamy R. Iyer, “Selecting the Next CAG,” The Hindu, February 21, 2013.

33 Baijayant Panda, “Empowering a New CAG,” The Times of India, April 11, 2013.

34 Sengupta, op. cit. note 10, 596.

35 The Hindu, November 8, 2012.

36 Mehta, op. cit. note 13.

37 Scott, James C., Comparative Political Corruption (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 25Google Scholar.