Nothing 'sensational' about it

How a changed CAG handled the media on Friday's tabled reports, in marked contrast to a recent and much-reported past

The astronomical 12-digit loss figures were missing, the word ‘scam’ was called an ‘invention of the media’ and a mere mention of the phrase ‘notional loss’ evoked an instant and collective denial. The media briefing of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), the first one after the new government took over, was a far cry from the heady days under previous incumbent Vinod Rai.

His successor, Shashi Kant Sharma, skipped the media briefing and allowed his deputies and senior auditors to hold fort. The deputies and the media advisor did well to stick to the finance minister’s recent advice on ‘not to sensationalise’ and ‘not to get into headlines’.

The invite for the media briefing of the nine reports tabled in Parliament on Friday clearly said it was ‘off-camera’.   As this reporter walked up the staircase overlooking a tennis court to the first floor Narahari Rao Hall, named after the first CAG of free India, it almost seemed like one had entered a quiet reception for one of those winter weddings, as none of the TV reporters attempted any daredevilry smuggling in of microphones or cameras.

There were, though, two TV cameras. As inquisitive reporters asked around whose camera it was, it turned out it was hired by the CAG itself. One TV reporter asked the media advisor how these cameras had got in and the latter replied, “These are for my consumption. To check if we have answered your questions correctly.”  When the reporter asked, “Ek copy humey bhi de dijiye (Give us a copy),” the advisor burst out laughing, saying… “very nice”.

Ashok, the cameraperson recording the proceedings, said he worked for Liberty News Pictures, a private production house and was a regular at the venue. When asked if he would share the footage, he refused. “We are not allowed,” he said.

As the briefing went through the report covering the irregularities in Special Economic Zones, reporters tried their best to grab headlines from the statements of the senior auditors. When one reporter asked the size of the SEZ scam, the media advisor intervened,  saying, “The word 'scam' is an invention of the media, not that of CAG.”

Then, would you call it loss to the exchequer? To this, one of the auditors who'd worked on the report said it was not even that. When this reporter tried to insert the word ‘notional loss’ into the conversation, both the auditor and his senior jumped in to say, “No, no, there is no notional loss,” and started explaining.   

They preferred to stick to the term “ineligible deductions” for the Rs 1,150 crore referred to in the report.

Fed up of not finding any headline nearly 20 minutes into the conference, a reporter asked in Hindi, “Sir, hum simple sentence mein jaanna chahte hain, government ko kitna nuksaan  hua (We want to understand in a simple sentence what the loss to the government was)?”

The author of the report was unfazed: “SEZ Act mein jis tareeke se bola gaya hai, us tareeke se implement nahi hua (The implementation was not in line with what is said in the SEZ Act.)”

Further attempts to bring out the loss on account of the finding that 5,402 hectares of SEZ land had been denotified and diverted for commercial purposes also proved futile, as the CAG said it had not quantified those losses.

Similar scenes came up when the report on the hydrocarbon production sharing contracts came for discussion. At one stage, when reporters tried to quote the CAG’s observations in relation to other companies and compare it with the KG-D6 contractor, the senior auditor asked the author of the report “not to answer any external questions”. The reporter’s protests that it was indeed about the report was drowned in other queries.

When a senior reporter tried to ask what the actual amount of disallowance would have been if the auditor had not taken only a sample and considered the entire record provided by the contractor that amounted to around $10 billion, the seniors literally dragged the author out of the question to a more benign one.

Three years ago, the then CAG had created a huge furore by throwing open his famous 2G telecom spectrum report briefing to live television, creating a severe backlash from the United Progressive Alliance government. Kapil Sibal, then telecom minister, had slammed the Rs 1.75 lakh crore loss figure as ‘utterly erroneous.’  The CAG had then issued a statement objecting to the minister’s giving one when a parliamentary panel was going through it, calling it “highly improper and may even amount to contempt of the House”.

Manish Tewari, then a Congress party spokesperson, said, "It is an exotic logic that after going live with presumptive losses contained in the CAG report in flagrant violation of canons of parliamentary propriety, the CAG is now resorting to the argument of propriety."

As Friday’s briefing closed and the media advisor asked ‘tired’ reporters to join for tea, this reporter asked him why they decided to keep the briefing ‘off-camera.’ He said, “On-camera toh hum do saal se nahin kar rahe (We have not been doing on-camera for two years now).”

Rai was smiling from the golden-framed larger-than-life portrait on the wall to the left of Narahari Rao Hall’s main door.