CAG wanted to exaggerate losses: B K Chaturvedi

Former Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi has come down heavily on the then Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai, saying it appeared that the auditor wanted to exaggerate the losses as he treated the public as his audience rather than the Parliamentary body which was mandated to look into it.

In his memoir ‘Challenges of Governance: An Insider’s View’, Chaturvedi says that the CAG has entered the domain of policy-making and many of its findings were derived from first assuming what the government policy should have been and then computing profits to the private sector.

Chaturvedi writes, “whether driven by the zeal to identify corrupt acts or to clean the system or for some other laudable motive, each institution must not move beyond its boundaries. The period between 2007 and 2014 was turbulent, which saw institutions crossing into the domain of the executive.”

“In its two reports on coal and telecom, the CAG assumed the role of the government’s economic policy-maker and computed losses. This was a disastrous approach and against all norms of governance,” Chaturvedi, who became a Planning Commission member in 2007 after his retirement as Cabinet Secretary, says.

Chaturvedi was of the view that there was no analysis of “some of the absurdities” of the CAG reports and that none cared that the CAG’s loss-to-exchequer figure was based on his own framing of the government policy on the issue. “In the long run, these developments in our society and polity adversely impacted the national economy,” he says.

The auditors or the courts could “point out, criticise and suggest policies,” but it is an unhealthy democratic convention to start laying down government policies.