Need Social Audit of schemes for local bodies: CAG

There is a need for Social Audit of government schemes executed by local bodies as their accountability and transparency have not been commensurate with the increase in fund allocations to them, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Shashi Kant Sharma said today.
"The accountability and transparency mechanism in local government have not been commensurate with the increasing responsibilities and flow of ever increasing funds. The mechanism of social audit can come quite handy in dealing with this difficult situation," the government auditor said at an event here.
Sharma said the expenditure of Union government and state governments, which directly impacts the socio-economic development, was estimated to be Rs 17 lakh crore in the financial year 2013-14.

"This implies that an average of Rs 2,656 crore of expenditure is incurred as 'development expenditure' per district," he added.
A large part of this development expenditure is being executed through local bodies such as Panchayat Raj institutions and Urban local bodies.
Social Audit process involves auditing of various schemes by Social Auditors like NGOs. Conceptually, it goes beyond the realm of traditional financial audit as it focuses on issues such as awareness, grievance redressal and feedback about the programme.

"It is more akin to performance audit," Sharma said.
His comments assume significance as the 14th Finance Commission has more than doubled the grant for local bodies.

In its report, which covers the period between 2015 and 2020 and was tabled in Parliament last month, the commission has fixed the grant at Rs 2.87 lakh crore - over Rs 2 lakh crore more than that of the 13th Finance Commission.
Of this money, nearly Rs 2 lakh crore has been allotted to panchayats, while the rest will go to municipalities.
There are over 2.6 lakh panchayats in India.
The CAG urged all his officials in the states to adopt a positive outlook towards social audit.
Sharma said that we can also use evidence and report generated by social audit to highlight various issues in important programmes and recommend suitable corrections at state national level.