After the rumpus caused by the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General the Government seriously considered clipping the wings of “That Charlie”. One bright idea was to put defense and nuclear projects out of the purview of CAG audit. In an interview to a French periodical, Rajiv Gandhi said recently that the nuclear installations in Pakistan are not subject to audit.
It may be recalled that the Atomic Energy Establishment when it was established three decades ago, was exempted from audit scrutiny. Dr. Homi Bhanbha was given a free hand and Pandit
Nehru agreed to certify the expenditure. But the first Prime Minister of India soon realized that the project involved very high amounts of public money and changed his mind. Since then India’s nuclear projects are regularly subjected to audit scrutiny.
T.N. Chaturvedit had even made some extremely critical references on the working of the nuclear energy programme, but the Government did not react negatively to these as itis now doing to the 18 page report on the Bofors.
The Government is, however, in no hurry to pursue its own line of thinking about curbing the
CAGs domain. There is conflicting legal opinion on whether it could be done by a simple Act of Parliament or bring forward a constitutional amendment to change the wordings in Articles 149 and 151. The second alternative poses problems for the Government.
In any case a change in the law would not help the present government, Taking audit to the people cannot be an election priority, One senior Congress (1) leader is believed to have remarked: Why all this fuss about curbing CAG’s powers? We can always appoint shankaranand as the next CAG.”
Article extracted from this publication >> September 22, 1989
