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The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has termed the Assam government budgetary assumptions for 2023-24 "unrealistic and overestimated," pointing out that in several cases supplementary grants were approved where expenditure of the original allotted funds was not even done. It also highlighted non-submission of Utilisation Certificates (UCs) and annual accounts of several autonomous councils and other bodies. The CAG report on state finances for 2023-24, laid in the Assembly on Saturday, said the budgetary assumptions of the state government "continued to be unrealistic and overestimated" during the fiscal year, as it incurred an expenditure of Rs 1,39,449.66 crore against grants and appropriations of Rs 1,69,966.13 crore, resulting in overall savings of Rs 30,516.47 crore. These savings stood at 17.95 per cent of total grants and appropriations made for the year. The report said that "the savings were notional, as the funds were not actually available for expenditure", since t
The CAG has asked the Centre and all the states to start using standard categories for recording government spending, to make accounting and auditing uniform across the country, latest by fiscal year 2027-28. The CAG advisory seeks to do away with the wide variation among states in the operation of expenditure heads at the disaggregated level. The matter had been engaging the attention of multiple stakeholders and was impacting inter-temporal and inter-state comparison as well as those with the Union Government, Jayant Sinha, Deputy CAG (Government Accounts) and Chairperson (GASAB) has said. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has notified a common list of heads of expenditure at the disaggregate level, commonly referred to as 'Object Heads' of expenditure. This is being done as part of recent initiatives to strengthen public financial management in the country, Sinha said. Wide variation in the depiction of expenditure of economic nature at the disaggregate level .
Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) K Sanjay Murthy on Friday launched the website of GASAB, aimed at improving accessibility and transparency in government accounting standards. Addressing the 37th board meeting of the Government Accounting Standards Advisory Board (GASAB), he said that initiatives and the work of all the organised accounting services in GASAB reflect the commitment towards improving transparency in government accounting and the standard-setting process. Murthy stated that the standard-setting work undertaken by GASAB is an exercise entailing multiple stakeholder interaction and feedback from subject matter experts. The due process of GASAB envisages a well-laid-down process of the selection of topics and the preparation of standards through a robust and inclusive consultative process with members, stakeholders, including specialists and the public, he added. Pivoted on good governance, fiscal prudence, efficiency, and transparency in public finances, .
The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) here on Tuesday. The MoU was signed by Ravi Agrawal, Chairman, CBDT, and AM Bajaj, Dy CAG (Commercial & CRA), in the presence of CAG K Sanjay Murthy.Both organisations will collaborate to promote academic, training, and research interaction/cooperation in capacity development and research activities in areas of mutual interest.The CAG emphasised that the signing of the MoU will significantly enhance professional cooperation and capacity-building efforts, particularly in data-driven technology, between the two Departments. This MoU will serve as a strategic framework to bridge the skills gap between the two institutions and foster mutual growth.This partnership will focus on a range of initiatives, including training workshops, joint seminars, sharing audit insights based on advanced data analytics, and the use of innovative ...
The committed expenditure on salaries, pensions, and interest payments increased by 2.49 times to Rs 15,63,649 crore in fiscal 2022-23 across all states from Rs 6,26,849 crore in 2013-14, said a CAG report on state finances. A large share of the revenue expenditure is either committed or tied up. Salaries, pensions, and interest payments on public debt and liabilities are treated as 'committed expenditure'. During the 10-year period from 2013-14 to 2022-23, revenue expenditure by the states constituted 80-87 per cent of the total expenditure and as percentage of combined GSDP, it was about 13-15 per cent. In FY 2022-23, revenue expenditure was 84.73 per cent of total expenditure and 13.85 per cent of combined GSDP, said the publication on State Finances 2022-23, the first of its kind by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. In FY 2022-23, out of the total revenue expenditure of Rs 35,95,736 crore, the committed expenditure was Rs 15,63,649 crore; Rs 3,09,625 crore on subsid
The apex government auditor CAG will launch a portal in November to provide nearly 10 lakh auditee entities with a unified digital interface to directly respond to queries, observations, and inspection reports. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) is transitioning to a system-wide strategic shift to remote and hybrid audits to increase audit coverage, reduce time for field audit at auditee premises and improve the quality of audit outputs. This transition is anchored in risk-based planning, secure access to government platforms (such as IFMS, e-Procurement and sectoral databases like WAMIS for public works etc.) and the use of geospatial tools like PM GatiShakti to strengthen evidence and consistency across sectors, Deputy CAG K S Subramanian told reporters here. The pilot studies of remote audits in many audit domains have been concluded, and they are now being replicated across offices. Remote audits in receipts audits are advancing faster due to higher automation, .
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pulled up the Bihar government for failing to submit utilisation certificates for projects worth Rs 70,877 crore. The report of the CAG on State Finances for the year 2023-24 was tabled in the state assembly on Thursday. "Despite the requirement of submitting UCs within the stipulated time period, 49,649 outstanding UCs of Rs 70,877.61 crore were not received by the Accountant General (Accounts & Entitlements), Bihar, as on March 31, 2024," it said. In the absence of UCs, there is no assurance that funds disbursed have been used for the intended purpose, the report said. "Moreover, high pendency of UCs is fraught with the risk of embezzlement, misappropriation and diversion of funds," it said. Of the total Rs 70,877.61 crore, Rs 14,452.38 crore pertained to the period up to 2016-17. The top five defaulting departments are Panchayati Raj (Rs 28,154.10 crore), Education (Rs 12,623.67 crore), Urban Development (Rs 11,065.50 crore), Rural
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India estimates on losses to BSNL from Reliance Jio Infocomm was based on the misinterpretation of a clause on add-on technology, and it has been rectified in a transparent and equitable manner, Parliament was informed on Wednesday. The CAG report tabled in Parliament in April had said the government suffered a loss of Rs 1,757.56 crore as state-owned telecom firm BSNL failed to bill Reliance Jio for 10 years since May 2014 as per their agreement on passive infrastructure sharing. "BSNL has Master Service Agreements (MSAs) with M/s RJIL, for leasing of BSNL's tower infrastructure to install their equipment. There is no revenue loss to BSNL and government. The estimate of CAG was based on the misinterpretation of the clause of add-on technology, which has now been rectified in a transparent and equitable manner. BSNL has since raised the revised invoices from RJIL," Minister of State for Telecom, Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar said in the Lok Sabha in
Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has set up a separate unit for auditing of about 1,600 public sector undertakings (PSUs) run by various state governments for faster auditing and achieving greater efficiency. "Very recently a separate vertical has been created. An order has been issued. Once this vertical comes up, one location will have positions for auditing only state PSUs of a particular state," Deputy CAG K S Subramanian (HR, IR, Coord and Legal) said. This will help in faster auditing of state PSUs and improving efficiency of public enterprises, he said, adding, this is similar to the Central Public Sector Enterprises which are audited by a separate vertical. Currently, state PSUs are audited by members of senior management which has to do auditing of 4-5 states rather than one particular region, Subramanian said, adding, it takes time. A separate vertical would help in consolidation of information of all state PSUs and it will be easy for stakeholders to compar
Chartered accountants' apex body ICAI on Friday said the engagement of CA firms by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) will not compromise the independence of the apex auditor. The comments from ICAI comes in the backdrop of Madurai MP S Venkatesan (CPM) writing a letter to President Droupadi Murmu objecting to the CAG's plan to hire CA firms for auditing of central autonomous bodies will strengthen the auditing process. In a detailed statement, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) said the engagement of CA firms by the CAG is in no way a compromise of its independence or constitutional function. "... Rather (it is) a strategic step to ensure effective coverage, domain-specific audit quality, and timely audit execution," it said. Further, the statement said, the move is fully supported by professional standards, and ethical safeguards embedded in the ICAI's framework. "Additionally, the scheme is expected to contribute to the organisation's (CAG) capacity .
The Odisha government has "lost revenue of Rs 864.45 crore" from minor mineral sources during the financial years 2015-16 to 2021-22, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said in its latest report. In its audit report on collection of revenue from minor minerals, the CAG said the government failed to collect Rs 864.45 crore towards the District Mineral Fund (DMF) and Environment Management Fund (EMF) on royalty from minor minerals supplied by contractors and used in public projects without valid transit passes amounting to Rs 4,624.58 crore. The authorities in charge of public projects deducted royalty amounting to Rs 4,624.58 crore from the bills of contractors or project executants due to non-production of valid transit passes and purchase receipts in support of procurement from authorised sources. A total of Rs 885.70 crore towards DMF and EMF on royalty was to be realised in the state, during 2016-22. However, the authorities in charge of public projects in 14 ...
The Delhi Transport Corporation's (DTC) liabilities rose from Rs 28,263 crore in 2015-16 to Rs 65,274 crore in 2021-22, as it incurred operational losses of more than Rs 14,000 crore during the same period, according to a CAG report tabled in the Assembly on Monday. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta tabled the report on the functioning of the DTC for the year ending March 31, 2022, in the budget session. The report highlighted that the public transporter had not prepared any Business Plan or Perspective Plan, nor signed any MoU with the state government to set physical and financial targets to contain its working losses. The transporter was also found not to have set benchmark to asses its performance as against other state transport undertakings. The DTC did not conduct any study on profitability/sustainability even though it was incurring losses continuously, the report noted. Between 2015 and 2023, DTC's bus fleet reduced from 4,344 to 3,937 buses. It could procure only 300 elec
The Supreme Court on Monday sought the Centre's response on a PIL seeking that the current practice of appointment of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India solely by the executive and the prime minister be declared violative of the Constitution. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh issued notice on the PIL filed by an NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation, and tagged it with the pending matter on the same issue. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO, said that the question is of independence of the institution and alleged that audits by CAG of states like Maharashtra, where the BJP is in power, are being stalled. The PIL also sought direction of the court mandating that the CAG shall be appointed by the President in consultation with an independent and neutral selection committee comprising of the prime minister, the leader of the opposition (LoP) and the chief justice of India and in a transparent manner. It said that the direction for ...