ALL INDIA AUDIT & ACCOUNTS ASSOCIATION
15/1089-90, VASUNDHARA, VASUNDHARA (P.O.), Dt. GHAZIABAD (U.P), PIN-201012
Ph: 0120-2881727/4101593/ 0 – 98681 45667
Website: www.auditflag.blogspot.com
Reference: AIA/Circular-28/2011 Dated: 17th November 2011
To
Unit Secretaries,
Members & Spl. Invitees – NE &
Members of Women's Committee
Dear Comrades,
IT IS TIME TO SAY WE ARE 99%
Today's news papers (Delhi Edition) carried a report on a ceremony held in the CAG's office – 150 years of CAG.
It was show of Gr A officers, the Group B and C were assiduously kept off – lest the sanctity of the ceremony will be sullied. All bigwigs were invited, the Finance Minister, the Chairman of Public Accounts Committee – but no staff side representative. No desecration of a holy ceremony please!
Normally we should have termed it as a celebration. But in the present case we are constrained to term it as a ceremony.
They were commemorating of the foundation of the institution of CAG by the British colonial rulers and reveling on it.
As citizens of sovereign republic one cannot celebrate the colonial legacy – even though it cannot be rubbed off altogether.
The testing stone is how far the institution of CAG has imbibed the spirit of sovereign republic and how the future is planned?
In both, one will have to say that grades may not be upto the mark.
The institution of CAG – IA&AD – is the most intolerant bureaucracy in the country, vehemently subjugating the rights of the employees to organise and protest. A Constitutional body should necessary have imbibed the constitutional guarantees in its real spirit. Tragically, it is not the case.
The Department has with all its limitations could effectively intervene in bringing about a semblance of Public Accountability – as watch dog Indian finances – through its findings. Every year this did save thousands of crores of rupees to the exchequer. It helped and forced the erring segments in the bureaucracy to act more diligently in the interest of the people and the nation. It is the Gr C & B officials in IA&AD who did bulk of this responsibility. This was possible through time tested audit methodology – regularity and propriety audit or transaction audit.
The decision of the Administration of CAG to do away with the time tested system of transaction audit – where actually irregularities are pointed out at initial stage itself leading to corrections – is going to be the death knell of Public Accountability. This will only help scamsters and fraudsters, not the nation and the tax payer.
(Note: The sensational audit report of late 1980s on the purchase of Bofors guns was the effort of regularity and propriety audit, not of performance audit – Bofors guns performed well during the Kargil war!).
Performance audit and thematic audit not preceded by transaction audit may give the department the headlines in the media, but will not serve the nation.
Rather this policy change in the audit criteria and audit methodologies is going to help the 1% (or much less than that) of the population who are hell bent to loot the country.
This is exactly why the otherwise to be celebration has to be termed as ceremony – ceremony to remember the past – where we will have nothing more to add.
In IA&AD, the department presided over by the Constitutional Authority CAG, more than 99% of personnel are Gr C and Gr B personnel. Any function ignoring the vast majority is a farce.
Reports emanating gives an impression that the institution of CAG is a divided house. It is not clear whether any hidden personal agenda is behind this reported division.
Just like "Occupy Wall Street" campaign with the slogan 'We are 99 %' the employees and officers of IA&AD has to assert – we are 99 %!
Campaign on the damage being caused to the nation through the change in audit criteria and audit methodologies has to be planned and effectively carried out.
With regards
Yours fraternally
(M.S.Raja)
Secretary General
