Friends,
While considering new institutions like Lok Pal, let us not forget existing administrative checks and balances. It is essential to make them more effective, by ensuring that their findings cannot be ignored. Audit by the India Audit and Accounts Department, headed by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, is an institution envisaged in the Constitution of India as an independent audit body, with professional autonomy and access to every Government office. If their findings can be ignored to perpetuate corrupt practices.apex level body like Lokpal can only result in punishment to corrupt officers, post-facto.
News item from Times of India placed below highlights that financial mess in CWG could have been avoided if Government had acted on audit warnings of 2007-08. The criticism is valid. Issue to be considered is whether any action is being taken against the executives instrumental in ignoring audit and avoiding corrective measures?
There is need for fixing responsibility and exemplary punishment, to demonstrate Governments sincerity towards making existing institutions work.
Dhirendra Krishna IA&AS (Retired)
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UNCOMMON WEALTH
Govt could have avoided CWG mess if it heeded '08 CAG alert
Rajeev Deshpande | TNN (Times of India 8.5.2011)
New Delhi: The government might have escaped a bloody nose and India a global stink if an audit warning of the Suresh Kalmadi-led Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee's bid rigging, sloppy stadium development, improper hires, slipshod records and botched accounting was heeded.
An audit of the OC's 2007-08 accounts by the CAG — conducted almost two years before the October, 2010, sporting gala — foretold key problems that ballooned into major scams, tainting the Delhi Games. With the benefit of hindsight, the audit is almost prescient.
The audit party from the directorate general of audit central revenues detected flaws in the consultancy for the Queen's Baton Relay (QBR). The first case the CBI filed after the Games related to irregularities in hire of cars and equipment for the QBR event in London in November, 2009. However, the rot had begun much earlier. The auditors found consultancy for the QBR awarded to Australian event consultant Maxxam International for the Rs 8-crore bid was higher by Rs 6 crore than the next one. Unfazed at being caught, the organizers claimed higher marks for experience and justified costs saying a shortfall would put national prestige and honour at stake.
The team stumbled on an absence of financial guidelines that saw a Rs 65-lakh loss in a media contract for Australian and New Zealand rights, arbitrary salaries for advisers appointed by Kalmadi, ranging from Rs 35,000 to Rs 85,000 a month; hiring of vehicles for Rs 22,500 to Rs 45,000 a car; higher rates to hotels without bulk discounts; placing expenditure under incorrect heads and a 20%-40% lag in stadium targets. The audit findings are part of an inspection report of OC accounts. There is no record of their being placed in Parliament. Despite repeated requests, the CAG spokesperson did not provide a response to TOI's queries.
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