Explore Business Standard
Comptroller And Auditor General CAG
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has pulled up the Maharashtra state excise department for serious lapses in its operations, which have led to a substantial revenue shortfall. The CAG report pointed out that due to incorrect assessment of licence renewal fees, the state lost Rs 20.15 crore in revenue and Rs 70.22 crore in interest. The audit further stated that failure to implement revised rates for supervision fees had caused an additional shortfall of Rs 1.20 crore. According to the report, the then Excise Commissioner exempted excise duty on old stock of beer without obtaining prior approval from the state government. The report also highlighted that the delayed submission of mild beer samples for chemical analysis had hampered tax recovery to the tune of Rs 73.18 crore. "Under the Bombay Prohibition (Privilege Fee) Rules, 1954, a provision exists to charge fees for changes in partnership. However, no such provision was applicable to significant changes in ...
Over 2.6 lakh construction workers in Bihar did not receive funds amounting to Rs 52.02 crore under the COVID Special Grant Scheme due to technical issues, a Comptroller and Auditor General of India report said. The CAG's performance and compliance audit report of the Bihar government for the year that ended on March 31, 2022 was tabled in the state assembly on Tuesday. It also stated that 3,02,476 construction workers were deprived of annual medical assistance amounting to Rs 90.75 crore, while budget provision of Rs 4,134.21 crore had not been utilised by the state universities, and that Bihar was deprived of World Bank assistance amounting to Rs 476.90 crore under the Neer Nirmal Pariyojna. "The state government framed the Bihar Building and Other Construction Workers Rules (BBOCW Rules) after a delay of nine years. The Bihar Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (BBOCWB) had been constituted after a delay of 28 months," it said. Further, the Board and the State
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 ...
Aligning India's auditing with global standards will help boost investors' confidence, attract more funds and ensure greater credibility to the financial data, National Financial Reporting Authority's chief Ajay Bhushan Prasad Pandey has said. He also asserted that the country cannot have "inferior standards" when the pursuit is to become a "Viksit Bharat". NFRA was constituted under the company's law in October 2018. The watchdog has passed more than 80 orders. In a recent interview, Pandey told PTI that there are certain gaps in existing auditing standards and that internationally, many standards were updated to address loopholes that had led to various scams. "In India, we are yet to update the standards in various areas. In the last 20 years, many of these standards are there in most parts of the world. We want to become Viksit Bharat, and our standards should also be aligned with global standards. We cannot have inferior standards," the NFRA Chairperson said. According to him
K Sanjay Murthy, former higher education secretary, on Thursday took charge as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). He belongs to Indian Administrative Service of Himachal Pradesh cadre (1989 batch). Murthy succeeds Girish Chandra Murmu, who demitted office on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Murthy was sworn in as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India by President Droupadi Murmu at a function in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Prior to this, Murthy was Secretary, Department of Higher Education in the Ministry of Education. He has also served as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and CEO, National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Murthy was named the new CAG by the Centre on Monday. Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, among others, were present at the oath-taking ...
The government on Monday said K Sanjay Murthy will be the next Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Murthy, a 1989 batch IAS officer of Himachal Pradesh cadre, will succeed Girish Chandra Murmu. He is currently Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education. "By virtue of the power vested in her by clause (1) of article 148 of the Constitution of India, the President has been pleased to appoint K Sanjay Murthy to be the Comptroller and Auditor General of India with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office," said a notification issued by the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. Girish Chandra Murmu assumed office as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on August 8, 2020. He will complete his term on November 20.
Comptroller and Auditor General of India G C Murmu on Wednesday said the supreme audit institution is in the process of developing its own Artificial Intelligence (AI) protocol for faster writing of its audit reports. "For data analysis and various other things, we have our own system in place...for the writing (audit reports) we have now started, so we have to see," he said here. "Data is collected by our auditors at the field from the records...in some cases, we have to reclassify according to our requirement. For that we run analytics...cleaning is done through the analytics," he said. Once cleaning of data is done and classification and integration made as per the requirement, he said, adding that algorithm biases are hardly there in analysing data. He said about 35 audit reports would be tabled in both Parliament and state assemblies during the upcoming winter session. About 200 reports are presented in a year by the office of CAG. Speaking about 16th Assembly of the Asian .
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has asked the Finance Ministry to identify high risk taxpayers in the GST composition scheme on a periodical basis and verify from other sources, including third parties, their declared value of sales to check tax evasion. Based on an analysis of 8.66 lakh composition taxpayers under the central jurisdiction between 2019-20 to 2021-22 fiscals, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found that a significant number of GST taxpayers have a high risk of crossing the turnover threshold for composition levy scheme (CLS). These high risk taxpayers were identified by audit from the data contained in GST returns viz. GSTR-4A, GSTR-7 along with third party data sources such as IT returns, 'Vahan' database etc. The GST composition scheme is available to taxpayers whose aggregate turnover, in the preceding financial year, has not exceeded Rs 1.5 crore. For taxpayers in special category states, this limit is Rs 75 lakh. The CAG said two major risk ar
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has highlighted the shortage of government healthcare personnel and irregularities in the procurement of medicines and medical equipment in Chhattisgarh. The CAG report on performance audit of Public Health Infrastructure and Management of Health Services for the year ended March 2022 was tabled in the state assembly on Friday. There was an overall shortage of 34 per cent (25,793 personnel) against the sanctioned strength of 74,797 in the health department, it said. Though the doctor per population ratio (1: 2492) improved during 2016-22, it was far behind the WHO benchmark of one doctor for 1,000 people and national ratio of 1:1456. The posts of doctors were not sanctioned uniformly on the basis of population, resulting in uneven distribution of doctors under the Directorate Health Services across districts, the CAG said. In 23 district hospitals, there was a shortage of specialist doctors (33 per cent), medical officers (four per cent) ..
The deficient financial management, poor planning and inclusion of unfeasible projects resulted in delayed or incomplete execution of projects under the Smart Cities Mission in Patna, the CAG said in a report. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said that "unfeasible projects" were included in the list of 44 initially approved projects, indicating "poor planning on the part of Patna Smart City Limited (PSCL) and the Urban Development and Housing Department (UD&HD) of Bihar government". "This ultimately resulted in delayed/incomplete execution of projects. The financial management of PSCL was also deficient, as funds had been diverted for unapproved projects and incorrect utilisation certificates had been submitted," said the compliance audit report of the CAG for the year ended March 31, 2022, which was tabled in the Bihar assembly on Thursday. The contract management for the mission was also poor as the complete scheme did not fulfil the desired objectives, it ...
If tax concessions announced by the government are treated as 'presumptive loss' by federal auditor Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), it would diminish democracy and not enhance it, opined former RBI Governor Duvvuri Subbarao. Subbarao, who held various positions including the Union finance secretary, wrote in his new book titled 'Just A Mercenary?: Notes from My Life and Career' about his involvement in the decision-making on the pricing of the 2G spectrum, an issue that embroiled the UPA-2 government amid charges of mammoth corruption. "If a democratically elected government decides to forego revenue in order to serve the larger public good of deepening telecom penetration, is it open to the CAG to substitute his own judgement for the government's and call it a 'presumptive loss'?" he asked. Subbarao was responding to a question on the 2G scam case and the CAG's investigation of the presumptive loss to the government during the UPA-2 period. "If the CAG is allowed t
Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Girish Chandra Murmu on Friday said that the objectives of the audit are not merely to find out the deviations, non-compliance and fault finding in lawful decision-making but to promote efficiency and effectiveness also. Speaking at the SRCC Business Conclave here, the CAG said different types of audit are taken up against the extant policies, rules, and standards prevalent at the time of audit. Murmu stated that accountability, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness are assertions that are tested in audit. Such independent checks on the functioning of the government provide credibility to the executive and confidence to the public at large, he said, and added securing accountability of the government protects its fiscal stability and its image globally. "Although accountability does not start and end with audit, it emphasises the need to fix responsibility for healthy governance. Different types of audits, as mentioned, promote ..
Delay in the provisioning of Availability Based Tariff (ABT) Metres by the West Central Railway resulted in an additional expenditure of Rs 75.10 crore on power purchase, according to a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report. The committee, which tabled its report in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, said the Railway Ministry had issued instructions in March 2015 to all zonal railways to get direct power from generating companies through open access and ensure the provision of ABT metres. The Ministry's instructions were aimed at reducing the traction tariff to optimise the unit cost of transportation. "Despite entering into an agreement in March 2016 under open access, power supply commenced only from January 2017 mainly due to a delay in the provisioning of ABT metres.The delay in shifting to open access resulted in an extra expenditure on power purchase amounting to Rs 75.10 crore," the report, which was based on a Comptroller and Auditor General of India report laid in Parliament in .
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said an audit of the Delhi Jal Board's records by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has been ordered to ascertain whether there has been any irregularity. Interacting with reporters, he warned that there could be a water and sewage crisis in Delhi in the coming days owing to the non-release of funds. A couple of weeks ago, Delhi Water Minister Atishi had claimed the national capital was staring at a 'man-made water crisis' due to the stoppage of funds to the Delhi Jal Board by the finance department and demanded Lt Governor V K Saxena's immediate intervention in the matter. Kejriwal, on Wednesday, said, "We have ordered a CAG audit of the last 15 years of records of the Delhi Jal Board. CAG is a third party and the biggest agency in the country. Things will become clearer now." "If someone has committed irregularities, they should be punished. If no irregularities have been committed, then those who level baseless allegations will
Comptroller and Auditor General of India Girish Chandra Murmu was on Monday overwhelmingly reelected as the external auditor of the World Health Organization (WHO) for a four-year term from 2024 to 2027. CAG is already holding this position in WHO for a four-year term from 2019 to 2023. "The present election was held on May 29, 2023 in the 76th World Health Assembly in Geneva, where the CAG of India was re-elected with an overwhelming majority (114 out of 156 votes) in the first round of voting itself," the CAG said in a statement in New Delhi. Tanzania received 42 votes. Seventy-nine votes were required for the majority. CAG's appointment is a recognition of its standing among the international community as well as its professionalism, high standards, global audit experience and strong national credentials, it added. "This resounding victory was made possible by the sustained support and tireless efforts of the Permanent Representative of India to The United Nations at Geneva, h