Unlike some of his party colleagues who had criticised the government auditor for “crossing the line,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday said he did not think the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had exceed its jurisdiction in matters pertaining to reports on various scams.
“I am making it clear that I do not think that the CAG is exceeding its jurisdiction or things like that, because its basic responsibility is to identify, if there is any, lapse,” Mr. Mukherjee said during his interaction at the inaugural session of the ‘Economic Editors Conference' here.
The Minister's statement assumes significance, considering that the CAG reports on Commonwealth Games and the 2G spectrum allocation had received flak from various quarters for having exceeded its mandate.
Mr. Mukherjee said, “So far as the role of the CAG is concerned, it is a constitutional role. As far as my knowledge about its functioning is concerned, the job of the CAG is only to find out financial irregularities ... in context of rules, laws and regulations as laid down by the government.”
In keeping with the CAG's role of investigating only wrongdoings, he said: “If out of 100, in 98 cases [the] government has done the correct things, they will ignore it. They just pick up only those two things where some irregularities have taken place.” However, whether “actual losses [owing to the irregularities] have taken place or whether it is a notional loss” was for the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to examine.
Mr. Mukherjee pointed out that a report by the CAG “is not automatically accepted by Parliament. [The] PAC examines it; they submit a report; and then if the report is accepted by Parliament, action is taken.”
The Minister noted that in recent times, problems arose owing to leaks of preliminary reports of the CAG, which did not contain the explanations from the ministries or departments concerned.
