BHUBANESWAR: Brushing aside criticism of the national auditor's method of calculating losses in coalgate and 2G spectrum scams, Comptroller & Auditor General Vinod Rai on Sunday said every CAG report has a certain 'basis'. The country is faced with corruption of unprecedented proportion, Rai said, while defending his reports, saying these were unique and extraordinary.
"Every report is unique and extraordinary. It has some basis. If it had no basis, we won't point out anything," Rai said at a seminar organised by the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), on 'Pursuit of excellence: role of governance'.
The CAG had earlier made a strong pitch for scrapping all controversial allocations of coal mines. Its report on coal block also got slammed by the UPA government, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejecting the findings and suggesting that it had erred in estimating gains for private players.
In its report on 2G spectrum allocation, CAG had estimated a loss of over Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the public exchequer and charged the telecom ministry with undervaluing 2G spectrum causing losses to the government.
"We in the audit and accounts department sincerely believe that our mandate is not to conduct audit, prepare reports and place them in the legislature. It is more than that. It is our responsibility to hold the government financially accountable to our audit especially in the social sectors," said Rai.
Corruption, he said, has two aspects in India. "We commonly use bribery and extortion interchangeably. We need to understand there is a fine distinction. Ordinarily, a person would resort to paying a bribe for expediting his work. It involves an element of willingness to extract favour. But extortion is an entirely different thing. It is forceful extraction," he explained.
Appreciating India's economic growth, Rai said the economy this millennium has recorded growth of around 8%. "It's a matter of pride that when the rest of the world was facing a global meltdown, with negative growth among the developed economies, our growth rate merely reduced to 6%," he argued.
Every CAG report has a basis: Vinod Rai
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Every CAG report has a basis: Vinod Rai
