Chandigarh's audit avalanche: Thousands of red flags ignored since 1971

Time of India

9 hours ago

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Chandigarh: In a city known for its bureaucratic rigidity, the Chandigarh administration seems to be treading a callous path when it comes to resolving a decades-long backlog of audit objections, some dating back to 1971.
According to the office of the Director General of Audit (Central) Chandigarh, more than 2,300 audit paras of different UT departments are pending. One of the oldest pending audit paras is from the UT excise and taxation department from 1971 regarding tax assessment.
For the UT estate office, an audit para from 1979 is pending, which relates to the outstanding balance of a scooter and car stand amounting to Rs 1.13 lakh in that year.
There are around 200 entities whose audit paras are pending. Audit paras of the education department are pending since 1980. Some of the audit paras of the sub-registrar office are pending since 1981. Several other UT departments have failed to resolve audit paras since 1981.
Among the govt agencies with the maximum number of outstanding paras is the UT engineering department, with more than 700 paras pending against different wings of the department.
Some of these have been pending since the 1980s. The estate office has around 155 pending paras. More than 600 audit paras are pending against the municipal corporation.
"The audit paras are to be resolved by the department concerned. Most of these relate to financial matters, and some are also regarding administrative policy. Such long pendency of the audit paras indicates that the administration doesn't take the audit process seriously.
The audit can only point out the lacunas and financial flaws within the administrative processes, but it is for the administration to rectify these and resolve them with the audit committee.
The administrative secretaries should ensure that audit paras in the inspection reports/local audit reports are resolved at the earliest," said an audit department official requesting anonymity.
Stating that the piling of the audit report shows that the administration has consistently failed to resolve the lacunas pointed out by the audit, the official said, "It shows that the executive is not taking the constitutional body seriously."
After the completion of the audit, the audit observations are forwarded to audited entities in the form of an inspection report. The major observations (part-II-A paras) which have potential are forwarded to heads of departments (HoDs) in the form of a statement of facts (SoF). After getting a reply from the HoD about the SoFs, the same are processed as potential draft paras (PDPs) and subsequently featured in the audit report as draft paras (DPs).
"There exist several mechanisms for enforcing compliance to audit, viz. audit committee meetings, bilateral meetings, quarterly/half yearly reports of outstanding IRS/paras, etc. In the case of draft paras of audit reports, selected paras are discussed in the public accounts committee (PAC), and recommendations/action taken notes are forwarded to this end on the basis of such discussion by the PAC," said the audit official.
RK Garg, a city-based social activist, said, "It is surprising that a large number of audit paras are pending for so many years, and it is almost all departments of UT. That means UT is not serious about discrepancies and irregularities pointed out by CAG. The administration should start monitoring the audit paras and initiate action for recoveries in financial transactions and launch a special month to submit replies to CAG.
The picture will not be cleaned unless strict action is taken and the responsibility of HoDs is fixed."
A senior UT official said, "The administration takes the audit paras very seriously and has developed different mechanisms like an online portal to allow administrative secretaries to regularly monitor the progress of resolution of paras. Similarly, regular meetings with the audit agency are held for this purpose."