Digvijaya hits out at CAG, asks if he wants to be PM

Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh hit out at the Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai for his remarks about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a function in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  According to a report in Zee News, the Congress leader said that the CAG’s duties are defined in the Constitution and everyone should work according to those definitions. “If the judiciary will do the executive’s work, the CAG will formulate policies and the civil society will formulate laws, then how will democracy run? What does the CAG want to become if not an accountant? Does he intend to become the Prime Minister?” Digvijaya Singh said. Delivering a lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School, Rai, whose reports on various scams had raised hackles of those in government, said the public auditor would endeavour to uncover instances of crony capitalism and counselled the government to support enterprises per se and not entrepreneurs. “Should we as public auditors limit our role to placing reports in Parliament or go beyond that and seek to sensitise public opinion on our audit observations especially so in social sector audits such as rural health, primary education, water pollution, environment, drinking water etc,” he said. “We may not be able to wipe out corruption, but our endeavour is to uncover instances of crony capitalism. Government should be seen to support enterprise per se and not particular entrepreneurs.” On the issue of the CAG exceeding its mandate, Rai observed that since the Indian democracy is maturing and the urban middle class is becoming more involved in citizen’s affairs, “we continue to tread the new path in the belief that the final stakeholder is the public at large.” Maintaining that the auditing of government and public entities has a positive impact on trust in society, Rai said, “It focuses the minds of the custodians of the public purse to use resources effectively, as they know that after audit scrutiny, the public will be aware of their actions.” With inputs from PTI