Don’t sensationalise to hit headlines: Jaitley to CAG

He said an auditor has to be “active… but activism and restraint are always the two sides of the same coin.” Jaitley said an auditor “has to scrutinise thoroughly the decision-making process. He has to necessarily eliminate the possibility of any form of nepotism.”

Jaitley also said an auditor must be able to distinguish between a wrong decision and a corrupt one. “If he finds it (the decision) is a corrupt view, then the level of discretion he exercises in commenting has to be entirely different,” he said.

He said the auditor must take “a more liberal approach” when confronted with multiple views. “Because let us also not forget that when we live in a society, which by temperament, having learnt the hard way the last few years, has become an over suspicious society… our job is not to convert the public opinion into a kind of a lynch mob,” said Jaitley.

“To create rationality in the reviewing process we spare a decision which palpably looks arbitrary, a decision which is not fair, a decision which is not honest and we leave some element of benefit of doubt for a decision where two possible views are possible. But we can always lay down the guidelines as far as the future is concerned,” he said.

“Both in the spectrum and coal cases, we have learnt that natural resources and their allotment is not the prerogative of the state to choose methodology… valuable resources cannot be allocated without value being realised,” he said. The CAG reports on 2G and coal blocks cases projected notional losses to the tune of Rs 1.76 lakh crore and Rs.1.84 lakh crore respectively.

On Monday, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee Chairman and senior Congress leader K V Thomas too had said at the conference that the auditor should restrict audits to financial impropriety and not come out with “astronomical” figures of notional losses.

(With PTI inputs)