Outgoing CAG for widening ambit of body’s jurisdiction

Remitting office on Wednesday — on his 65th birthday — Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai has batted for widening of the CAG’s jurisdiction by including local self-government bodies, public private partnership (PPP) projects and even government-aided NGOs within the ambit of its audit.

Remitting office on Wednesday — on his 65th birthday — Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai has batted for widening of the CAG’s jurisdiction by including local self-government bodies, public private partnership (PPP) projects and even government-aided NGOs within the ambit of its audit.

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“All PPPs, PRIs and ULBs (urban local bodies), societies, etc should be brought under the CAG,” Rai told PTI.

PPPs are now the preferred mode for executing infrastructure projects in airports, highways and ports.

And on government-aided NGOs too, he said: “That’s right, the special societies.”

In an eventful more-than-five-year tenure, Rai’s explosive audit reports had been damning for many politicians and important bureaucrats and the networks they were involved in, be it the omissions and commissions for the Commonwealth Games or the issue of allotments of 2G spectrum or coal blocks. But at no time did he ever think of quitting, Rai said.

On RP Singh, former Director General Audit, disowning the CAG report on spectrum allocation after retirement, Rai said: “It (disowning report) is not a fair thing to do because each one of us should not have personal loyalty…Our loyalty should be to our profession.”