Senior BJD leader and Kendrapara MP Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda has submitted two Private Members’ Bills for the consideration of Parliament to strengthen the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India and ensure its independence by changing the appointment process prescribed in the Constitution.
The CAG acts as the custodian of the public purse and provides the Parliament with information to ensure accountability and scrutiny of the Government. The CAG can do justice to this role only if it is competent, independent and empowered. In the first Bill, MP Panda seeks to amend the Constitution to prescribe that the CAG should be appointed on the recommendation of a committee consisting of the Speaker of the lok Sabha, the Prime Minister, the leader of Opposition of both lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. The committee should take a decision by simple majority. In the event of a tie, the names considered by the committee should be forwarded to the Chief Justice of India who can then use his deciding vote to break the tie.
In the second Bill, Panda has suggested to amend the Audit Act that governs the powers and the functions of the CAG to remove the impediments that hinder the performance of his duties. It seeks to give statutory backing to ‘performance audits’, bring contractual agreements and other partnership arrangements such as PPP within the ambit of the CAG, but protect private players from undue interference, prescribe timelines for reverting to information requests from CAG, lay down penalties and give additional powers such as the power to access premises and examine officials under oath, re-define the term ‘substantially financed’ from Government revenue to bring more bodies within the ambit of the CAG, allow more scrutiny in cases where organisations receive loans or grants from the Government and prescribe time limits for laying CAG reports in the legislature.
Panda believes that empowering the CAG is the first step in containing the menace of corruption that is increasingly becoming entrenched in our system.