Almost a month after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) complained to the Petroleum Secretary, Vivek Rae, about the failure of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to furnish financial statements, records and full access to SAP system for the KG-D6 block, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry has directed RIL to provide all the records as soon as possible.
In the July 22 communication to RIL, the Petroleum Ministry has asked the company to furnish all the records being sought by CAG as soon as possible to allow the audit exercise to proceed smoothly and be completed on time.
“RIL has responded that the pending information was being collected and would be provided when it was ready. Audit of KG-D6 block is a time bound process, therefore, Ministry has directed RIL to provide all records as early as possible,’’ the communication by the Ministry said.
The Principal Director of Audit (Economic and Service Ministries), A. M. Bajaj, had, on July 3, in a letter to Mr. Rae, sought his intervention, and pointed out the difficulties being faced by the CAG audit team in getting prompt replies, information and documents. CPI MP Gurudas Dasgupta had also written to CAG pointing out to the hurdles being created by RIL in the path of smooth audit and had asked the constitutional authority to intervene in the matter and ensure that the CAG audit team gets access to all the records, documents, financial statements and access to SAP system.
“The Director-General (Commercial-II), P. Sesh Kumar, has informed me that the field officers engaged in audit of the block have requisitioned the records from RIL in a time bound manner to enable submission of the report to Parliament,’’ Mr. Dasgupta said here.