CAG to audit all Rural Development Expenditures: Jairam

The Union Minister for Rural Development Shri Jairam Ramesh said that Performance Audit of MGNREGA for all the States will be placed before Parliament by the end of Winter Session of Parliament this year. Talking to media after meeting the Comptroller and Auditor General here, Shri Ramesh said that his Ministry will receive the draft report by October end and by the last week of November, the report will be finalised to present it before Parliament. He said, the Performance Audit of MGNREGA will cover the period from 2007 to 2011 and informed that the Rural Development Ministry spends about 40,000 crore rupees each year on the job guarantee scheme. He said, the audit of Indira Aawas Yojana will be taken up next year and the audit system will be extended to other schemes of the Ministry gradually. The Minister also informed that from this year, it will be compulsory for every Gram Panchayat to be certified by a Chartered Accountant, drawn up from a district level panel prepared by CAG. He said, given the popularity of convergence in MGNREGA, efforts will be made to follow it up more vigorously, but at the same time added that in the process of convergence, separate accounts of each schemes must be maintained, otherwise it will jeopardise the integrity of the audit system. He said, the Ministry will revisit the convergence guidelines to make it more amenable to modern audit system. Referring to the problems due to different system of audits followed by Accountant Generals of the States in the Drinking Water Supply Scheme, Shri Ramesh said that CAG will ensure that all the States will follow the Tamil Nadu model of audit, which is an integrated system supervised by a Board.