176,000 'opinions'

Former Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Vinod Rai has discovered that the controversies in telecom spectrum and coal mine allocations that were uncovered during his tenure have followed him into retirement with many public accolades and awards. But Rai retains a sense of balance for all that. At a recent event, he told his audience that for every accolade there were almost 176,000 people who would disagree with the notion that he tried to reform the CAG. The figure was an indirect reference to Rs 176,000 crore, the upper end of a range of estimates the CAG calculated as the loss the government suffered owing to irregularities in allocating 2G telecom spectrum.