Govt skipped tabling CAG report in Assembly

Srinagar, Feb 21: After failing to act on audit reports, the government did not present the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report in the recently-concluded Budget Session of the Assembly.
In December last year, Governor, N N Vohra, asked the state government to constitute a high-level committee to ensure “time-bound action” on the findings of the CAG on the functioning of the government departments.
Accountant General (Audit) also raised the issue with the Governor that departments were not acting on the findings of CAG report.
“CAG has already raised various issues pertaining to the functioning of various departments but have not been addressed by the government,” sources said.
Governor had also pressed for placing report in the two houses of the legislature.
However, the government skipped presenting the CAG report in the Budget Session, which, as per the officials, is mandatory.
Sources said that it has happened only a few times when the CAG report was not presented in the Assembly.
Speaker Legislative Assembly, Kavindar Gupta, said they did not receive the CAG report from the government.
“Government shall have sent it to us so that we could have presented in the assembly. I don’t know why the report was not sent to us,” Gupta said.
Accounts General (Audit), Sushil Kumar Thakur, said that it is “mandatory” for the government to present the CAG report in the Assembly.
“In the previous years, the CAG report was being presented in the Assembly,” Thakur said.
On February 8, Minister of State for Finance Ajay Nanda tabled a copy of ‘Finance Accounts (Volume I) and (Volume II) for 2016-2017’.
He also tabled a copy of Appropriate Accounts 2016-2017, Accounts at a Glance for 2016-17 and Annual Technical Inspection Report on Urban Local Bodies for the year ending March 31, 2016, in the Legislative Assembly. However, the government did not present the CAG report.
Nanda’s phone was continuously switched off.
An official of the Assembly said that not tabling the CAG report was a ploy to by the government to “hide” its failures.
“If government has nothing to hide then why the report was not presented,” the official said.
The official said that legislators and media persons were waiting for the CAG report.
“The speaker adjourned the house sine die, which saved the government from the criticism of opposition for not tabling the report,” the official said.
The CAG has to gauge the progress of developmental projects and their impact on the masses of people. It has to identify the hurdles in the way of implementation of projects, which can be technical, financial, administrative or circumstantial.