Journalism of Courage
In yet another step aimed at making sensitive agencies and organisations more accountable, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) is working on a special audit of projects cleared by the National Security Council (NSC), which is headed by the Prime Minister. This is the first time the CAG would audit the NSC’s projects.
Officials said that while the proposal for the special audit was cleared towards the end of the tenure of the UPA 2 government, the CAG subsequently got the signal to proceed with the exercise when the NDA government came to power. CAG officials confirmed that they have started work on the special audit, and that their first secret report would be finalised soon.
Just like the report for the CAG’s special audit of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), which commenced in 2010, the NSC audit report would be submitted only to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and not placed in Parliament like routine audit reports.
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It is learnt that following discussions between the PMO and the CAG last year, the then National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon had approved detailed guidelines for the special audit, and it was decided that the PMO would pick the first batch of sample projects to be put under scrutiny. “The idea is that no intelligence agency or organisation should completely remain out of an oversight mechanism” a top government official said.
The officials explained that the NSC often approves projects and proposals which are sensitive in nature, and budgets for which are earmarked either from the secret service funds or the annual budgets of an intelligence agency or one of the three services. The procedures and purchases for a clutch of such projects and proposals would now be scrutinised by a special team of auditors.
As earlier reported by The Indian Express, the CAG had similarly embarked on a special audit of the NTRO and reportedly found a large number of problems with staffing, purchases and disbursement of funds. The NTRO special audit has, however, never been made public and though an auditor is meant to be permanently posted in the organisation, a vacancy exists at the moment.
Similarly, the oversight mechanism was also tightened for the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), which has a system of internal auditing. The Secretary (R&AW) is, however, expected to discuss the action taken on audit objections that came up during an internal exercise with the CAG.
