Bulldozer is being run over the CAG, officers who exposed corruption transferred: Congress

The controversy over the CAG started when The Wire reported that the CAG officers responsible for exposing corruption in road projects, the Ayushman Bharat health scheme, Ayodhya development project and a few other schemes had been transferred

Pawan Khera: File picture

Sanjay K. Jha, TT, New Delhi, 22.10.23 : The Congress on Saturday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on whose orders fieldwork by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India had been stopped after several reports by the watchdog exposed corruption in various government departments.

Party media department head Pawan Khera alleged that the CAG, which had once been used to defame the Congress-led UPA, had now been strangled.

"Why were audit officers documenting CAG report(s) given orders to 'stop all fieldwork' and under whose instructions? Is the PMO or the home ministry directly interfering in the functioning of the CAG?" Khera said.

Some 12 CAG reports in 2023 have caused embarrassment to the Modi government, puncturing its claim that corruption had been eliminated.

Khera recalled that the current CAG, Girish Chandra Murmu, had been the principal secretary to Modi when he was Gujarat chief minister, and was later appointed by Union home minister Amit Shah to the political position of Jammu and Kashmir lieutenant governor.

Alleging that Murmu was not clearing new reports, Khera asked: "Has he stopped signing the files due to pressure from the big two at the helm of affairs?"

Khera said the CAG’s autonomy had been crippled over the years.

"In 2015, they produced 55 reports. In 2020, only 14 reports. The media too forgot the CAG. No more 'farzi Gandhi' (a reference to Anna Hazare) sitting on hunger strike, no more prime-time debates, no more questioning the government,” he said.

"On the contrary, (a) bulldozer is run over the CAG as officers who exposed corruption are transferred out."

The controversy over the CAG started when The Wire reported that the CAG officers responsible for exposing corruption in road projects, the Ayushman Bharat health scheme, Ayodhya development project and a few other schemes had been transferred.

"Why are CAG officers who exposed massive scams of the Modi government transferred? Were they not toeing the unwritten line of the Modi-Shah duo?" Khera said.

"Is this not a clear case of bulldozing an autonomous institution? Why were they removed after being appointed only for a few months?"

He asserted that the Modi government had become a habitual offender in the matter of clipping the wings of institutions.

The CAG report on the Ayushman Bharat scheme showed how money had been siphoned off through "treatment" of the dead, apart from thousands of beneficiaries linked to the same invalid phone numbers.

The CAG found a cost escalation of 60 per cent in the Bharatmala road project, and that of 1,400 per cent in the Dwarka Expressway project. It exposed undue benefits to contractors, worth crores of rupees, in the Ayodhya development project.

CAG reports also pointed to irregularities in the rural development ministry, Hindustan Aeronautics, the Udan scheme, the railways, Khadi Gram Udyog and the tea board.