There is a need for Social Audit of Government schemes executed by local bodies as their accountability and transparency have not been commensurate with the increase in fund allocations to them, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Shashi Kant Sharma said on Tuesday. “The accountability and transparency mechanism in local Government have not been commensurate with the increasing responsibilities and flow of ever increasing funds. The mechanism of social audit can come quite handy in dealing with this difficult situation,” the Government auditor said at an event here.
Sharma said the expenditure of Union Government and state governments, which directly impacts the socio-economic development, was estimated to be Rs17 lakh crore in the financial year 2013-14. “This implies that an average of Rs2,656 crore of expenditure is incurred as ‘development expenditure’ per district,” he added. A large part of this development expenditure is being executed through local bodies such as Panchayat Raj institutions and Urban local bodies. Social Audit process involves auditing of various schemes by Social Auditors like NGOs. Conceptually, it goes beyond the realm of traditional financial audit as it focuses on issues such as awareness, grievance redressal and feedback about the programme.