Letters: Vinod Rai's legacy

Apropos Sukumar Mukhopadhyay's article "Did the CAG overstep the mark?" (May 13), the retiring Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai has metamorphosed the image of his department as did T N Seshan to the Election Commission, but unlike him, in a non-boisterous manner. Rai has opened the CAG reports to the public eye under the provisions of the Right to Information Act. His team has been criticised for the "exaggerated" estimates of revenue losses arising from the wrong implementation of a policy or a procedure. However, one cannot allege that these were motivated. There is no single method of working out loss to the exchequer arising from the audit of scams like 2G or Coalgate, and the CAG selected one of them and spelt out the basis in its reports. It is wrong for the affected politicians to blame Rai for their troubles by the Central Bureau of Investigation or the judiciary. The CAG's reports did not suggest foul play on the part of the prime minister, but emphasised the lacunae in the system followed by the government in the allotment of coal blocks. That was the Bharatiya Janata Party and other activists' interpretation. Rai has proved how a bureaucrat can contribute to the enhancement of the government's systems by discovering its latent value. He is leaving behind a rich legacy, and let us hope that he will be followed by equally spirited successors.

Y G Chouksey Pune

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