Cong attacks govt on transfer of officers involved in audit of Expressway

The Congress on Wednesday accused the government of intimidating officers of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), who had exposed "corruption" in various schemes, and demanded that their transfer orders be revoked.

Citing a media report on the transfer of the officers, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh charged that it is the modus operandi of the Modi government to threaten and remove anyone who "exposes" them.

"We demand that these transfer orders should be cancelled immediately, the officers return to the CAG and action must be taken on these mega scams relating to Dwarka Expressway, Bharatmala and Ayushman Bharat," he said in a post on X.

The Congress leader charged that "the Modi government operates mafia style under a cloak of silence and intimidation. If anyone exposes its modus operandi of corruption, they are threatened or removed".

The latest victims are three officers of the CAG, who exposed "massive scams" in government schemes in a report tabled during the Monsoon Session of Parliament, he alleged.

The CAG report showed scams across infrastructure and social schemes. It documented 1400 per cent cost inflation and tendering irregularities in the Dwarka Expressway, in addition to a diversion of Rs 3,600 crore from highways projects, faulty bidding practices, and 60 per cent cost inflation of the Bharatmala scheme, he claimed.

"Not only that, an audit of the Ayushman Bharat scheme showed lakhs of claims made to dead patients and at least 7.5 lakh beneficiaries linked to a single mobile number," he also claimed.

Ramesh charged that the three CAG officers in charge of reporting on the Ayushman Bharat and Dwarka Expressway scams have been transferred "to hide the blatant corruption in the Modi Government, despite the fact that the CAG is supposed to be an independent body".