The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has charged the Union government with “diluting the authority of Parliament” by not complying with the process of taking timely and remedial action on the audit observations of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG), which the PAC does not scrutinise for practical reasons.
While scrutinising the CAG's performance audit relating to the Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme (ARWSP) of the Rural Development Department for 2007, the PAC took the opportunity to examine the general negligence by various Ministries in reconciling the audit reports.
Headed by senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi, the PAC has expressed “serious concern” over the failure of the Centre to carry out timely submission of Action Taken Notes (ATN) to the PAC and maintained that not making timely response was “tantamount to diluting the authority of Parliament.”
The failure of the Ministry of Rural Development to be prompt with its ATNs on four points raised by the CAG report tabled in 2008 prompted the PAC to take cognisance of the “inordinate delay” by various Ministries and departments in submitting ATNs.
“This trend is fraught with danger,” the PAC maintained, and stressed that it was “perturbed” by the large number of pending audit paragraphs, on which remedial and corrective ATNs were not furnished by several Ministries. “It is a reflection on the working of the government of India,” the report said.
The report said the committee was “agitated” to note that even after its intervention, the overall picture in providing remedial and corrective ATNs remained “rather dismal.”
Regarding it “practically impossible” to examine each and every paragraph contained in the audit report, the PAC selectively takes up a few relatively more important paragraphs for in-depth examination and evolved the system that the Ministries would furnish remedial and corrective ATNs on the non-selected paragraphs within four months of the report being tabled in Parliament.
According to the report, the Finance Ministry admitted that the Ministries were required to submit at least 4,191 ATNs as on June 25, 2010. However, the CAG put this figure at 3,462.
Taking note of the discrepancy, the PAC directed the Finance Ministry and the CAG to reconcile the figure and apprise it of the latest correct figure.
