CAG's role to ensure optimal implementation of policy, says chief government auditor
“Carriage fee is now a well-regulated issue and it should be transparent. We will intervene if required but we won’t relook at the recommendations,” he said in an interview to NDTV.
Amid the ongoing debate over the role of the government auditor, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai has said the supreme auditing body has the mandate to ensure that government policies are optimally implemented. "...our mandate is very clearly to ensure that policy once formulated must be most optimally implemented," Rai said at a book release function in New Delhi on Monday.
Irrespective of whatever debate taking place in the country, he said “Policy formulation is indeed the sole prerogative of the government. We do not at any point of time ever feel that we should either be part of policy formulation, process or question the policy.”
In checking efficacy or the efficiency of government schemes and project, Rai said there was a “very thin dividing line where we do at time(s) assess the optimality or sub-optimality of a particular policy in the course of its devolution.”
However, he added, the role of CAG has changed and it has to see that whatever policy is approved by Parliament or the government meets its objective.
“We do certify the account, check the accounts and scrutinise but there is a clear mandate that is given to us, that mandate we must fulfill. In fulfilling that mandate we also have to ensure that we do not cross the rule,” he said.
Referring to the changing role of auditors, Rai said, “We are also no longer auditors as we were probably 50 years back or 40 years back because models of the governance have changed...necessarily, our role is not static.”
During an interaction with editors last year in June, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had made critical remark about the CAG, saying that “Never in the past has the CAG decided to comment on a policy issue. It should limit the office to the role defined in the Constitution.”
CAG reports on various issues including 2G spectrum allocation and conduct of Commonwealth Games have evoked sharp reaction from the government in the recent past.