Rich Heritage of C&AG of India - Celebrating 150 Years

by B.S. Chauhan, Media Advisor to Comptroller & Auditor General

One of the most important day in the history of India was when 150 years ago, the
first Accountant General was appointed on 16th November, 1860. He was Sir Edmund
Drummond. Releasing a commemorative postage stamp at the beginning of the year
long celebrations the President of India, Shrimati Pratibha Devisingh Patil said, “in a
democratic set up, auditing of public accounts was viewed with such great
significance that the makers of our Constitution, notably Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar,
created an Independent constitutional authority for this purpose. The institution of the
C&AG had not only a distinguished history in India, but it was also matched with
distinguished performance. The Indian Audit and Accounts Department and the
Auditors General heading it successively, have sought to build an institution on the
foundations of an accountability-centric philosophy. However, in a fast changing
socio-economic scenario, it would be useful, from time to time, to revisit the
practices, and procedures being followed. With growing awareness of citizens, their
interest in how efficiently and effectively public money is spent, has been increasing.
Public auditors have a major challenge to respond competently to this growing
expectation of the stakeholders”. She also emphasized that public financial
accountability and probity are essential for rooting out corruption.

Over the ensuing years, the responsibilities, status and Independence of the Auditor
General evolved and were enhanced. Shri V Narahari Rao took over as the first
Comptroller & Auditor General of Independent India in August 1948. The
Constitution of India in 1950 underlying the hopes and aspirations of our Founding
Fathers accorded a position of utmost eminence to the C&AG. The late Dr B R
Ambedkar called the C&AG “as the most important officer in the Constitution of
India. He is the One man who is going to see that the expenses voted by the
Parliament are not exceeded or varies from what has been laid down by the
Parliament.” And this duty entrusted to the C&AG by the Constitution is still being
carried out with the same dedication and sincerity, if not more, since the last 150
years.

The Indian Audit & Accounts Department is known for its high standard of
professionalism and core competence of its people. Audit by the C&AG has
traditionally been dealing with probity and compliance. This audit involves
verification of compliance by the government departments and agencies with the
applicable laws, rules and regulations. Instances of non-compliance, fraud,
wastefulness are highlighted for the attention of the legislatures and policy makers.
While the audit mandate of the C&AG extends across all the civil, revenue, defence,
railway, P&T, commercial departments of the Government, over the last century, this
organization has been adapting itself to the rapidly changing work environment. In
recent decades, with increasing demands from stakeholders to know more about
performance and results, highest priority has been accorded to Performance Audits of
people centric programmes in the social and infrastructure sectors, focusing on
evaluation of flagship programmes. C&AG’s reports afford an opportunity to the
Government to make midcourse corrections and improve service delivery.

With the local self governments evolving as the bedrock of India’s democratic system,
the C&AG’s organization has been providing technical support and guidance to local
bodies in the areas of accounts and audit. The Department has also successfully
adapted to changes brought about by automation. The use of information technology
was formally initiated in the early 1990s. With e-governance finding its space in the
public sphere, information technology audit has become a key resource with the
C&AG, with over 350 IT audits of diverse platforms and databases conducted so far.
The practices of IT audit won the Prime Minister’s award for excellence in 2008, an
evidence of the continuously evolving skill set of the personnel of the Department. In
addition, public private partnership and emergence of regulators in the economic
sphere and focus on sustainable development & environmental conservation has
introduced new audit concerns. The “governance landscape” is changing and keeping
pace with these changes, our Department is also proactively re-orienting our
approaches to our work.

In course of our journey, IA&AD have been viewed with skepticism and its role has
been typecast as that of fault finders. While it is true that the nature of the audit
function is one, that of, pointing out deviations, yet, C&AG has been motivated by
concerns of accountability and governance that it shares with the ordinary citizen of
the country. C&AG has been reaching out to all its stakeholders highlighting its work
and showcasing how it can aid in nation building. This has also been necessary as it
was found that for the ordinary citizen, the notion that C&AG is just another one of
the investigative agencies of the Government had to be dispelled. The constitutional
role and independence of the organization, which C&AG takes so much pride in, had
to be disseminated for creating awareness about the organization. This is also one of
the reasons why a need for a logo was felt, which identified C&AG uniquely and
served as a recall, in addition to the Asoka emblem. While releasing the logo of the
IA&AD a few days back, the present C&AG of India Shri Vinod Rai has said that
“this duty entrusted to the C&AG by the Constitution is still being carried out with the
same dedication and sincerity, if not more, since the last 150 years”.

In keeping with the diverse and multifarious needs of primary stakeholders – the
Legislature, the Executive and the Public at large, C&AG are in constant dialogue and
interaction with all our stakeholders. Honouring this very commitment, C&AG
celebrates 150 years with a Seminar on “Accountability and Governance” in which it
invited panelists - International and National public policy experts.

The IA&AD has excelled in promoting good governance through its accounting and
audit functions and has fulfilled the expectations of the law makers, the executive and
the general public. The external oversight of the C&AG over the public sector
programmes has contributed significantly to improvement in the design,
implementation procedures and performance information of the public sector
programmes and their outcomes. The revenue audit by the Department has yielded
recovery of hundreds of crores of rupees of under assessment. The audit entities
accept the audit findings of the Department of over payment/recovery in the range of
Rs. 15000 crores and recoveries upwards of Rs. 2750 crores are made annually. With
a growth in the revenue and public sector spending, the responsibility of the C&AG of
India has increased significantly over the years. The new methods of management and
delivery of the public sector programmes like public-private partnerships, revenue
sharing and license agreements for exploitation and management of natural resources,
outsourcing, the issue of sustainable development and increasing use of information
technology has made the audit more challenging.

With a dynamic approach the IA&AD has been equal to the challenge. It conducts
audit of thousands of offices every year. The C&AG of India presents about 100 audit
reports to the Parliament and the state legislatures. The objective and apolitical
approach and a meticulous professional procedures in audit had earned the confidence
of all sections of the political leadership and bureaucracy besides that of the common
pubic. The Department has attained a pivotal position in the community of global
supreme audit institution.

According to the vision and the mission statement released by the Prime Minister of
India Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Department strives to be a global leader and initiator
of national and international best practices in public sector accounting and auditing
and has been recognized even before Independence for its credible, balanced and
timely reporting on public finance and governance. The mission statement enunciates
the current role and describes what the Department is doing today. It states that
mandated by the Constitution of India the Department promotes accountability,
transparency and good governance through high quality auditing and accounting and
provides independent assurance to the stake holders-the Legislature, the Executive
and the Public- on the public funds being used efficiently and for the intended
purposes. While releasing the statements the Prime Minister has rightly mentioned
about the “two developments which have altered the patterns of spending public
money phenomena. The first is the progressive devolution of powers and resources to
the Panchayati Raj Institutions. Though progress in this area cannot be said to be
satisfactory, we hope that in the years ahead the Panchayati Raj Institutions will be
empowered much more with finances, functions and functionaries. The institutions of
accountability therefore will have to realign their processes to reflect this new
emerging reality. The other development is the increasing number of Public Private
Partnership projects both in the Centre and in the States. The Central as well as many
State governments have used this route successfully for impressive investments in the
infrastructure projects. With time, Public Private Partnership will be increasingly used
in diverse areas. There is, therefore, a need to improve the structure of Public Private
Partnership arrangements to ensure that they are transparent, ensure adequate
competitiveness and adequately safeguard the public interest. I expect that the
Comptroller & Auditor General will play a leading role in ensuring that these new
initiatives deliver as intended.”

Depending upon the objective of audit, the audits can be classified into three
categories. These are compliance audit, financial audit and performance audit. Apart
from these audits, number of audits of information technology systems and
environmental issues have also been done.

The Department has 219 offices throughout the country. And many of these offices
are housed in landmark buildings. As this office was set up during the British Raj,
many of the offices in the state continue to be in the same buildings. The Department
at present is in possession of great historical and glorious heritage buildings. Yarrows
and Gorton Castle at Shimla and the Treasury building at Kolkata are some of the
magnificent examples of such buildings which have been restored to provide modern
amenities while retaining the external facade and original shape intact.

Another hallmark of the Department is the rich professional and artistic excellence of
its officers. Some of them are: the Nobel laureate Dr. C.V. Raman the youngest
Deputy Accountant General, Grammy award winner music maestro Pt Vishwa Mohan
Bhatt, Kathak dancer Padmashri Shovana Narayan, Smt Malashri Prasad noted singer
of All India Radio, cricketer Debashis Mohanty, Umpire Swaroop Kishen and
international footballers Kiran Khongsai, Gunbir Singh and Manoharan.