Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari on Tuesday strongly favoured bringing NGOs, autonomous organisations, societies and trusts within the purview of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). He said that this move was necessary for ensuring better “transparency and accountability” in spending public funds, an Indian Express report said.

Delivering the inaugural address at the diamond jubilee celebrations of Yarrows, the National Academy of Audit and Accounts in Shimla, he maintained this had become necessary as flagship social sector and infrastructure programmes of the government and provision of subsidies consume the bulk of resources. And these were being increasingly utilised through special-purpose vehicles (SPVs), NGOs, public private partnerships and urban and rural local bodies.

Ansari, who is on a two-day visit to the state, said finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, too, in his valedictory address at the 25th conference of accountants general last month, had sought the focus of public audit on containing expenditure on subsidies without adversely affecting targeted beneficiaries of such subsidies.

Ansari said any organisation that came under the definition of “public authority” under the Right to Information Act should be subject to CAG audit. The existing provisions, according to him, were restrictive regarding the audit of public funds spent by NGOs, autonomous organisations, societies and trusts. He said public audit had been envisaged as an assurance to all stakeholders in a democracy that public resources were “utilised for public good, in compliance with the intent of the legislature and the orders of the executive”.

Ansari expressed the need for a mechanism of effective follow-up on the CAG reports as “an analysis of CAG found that out of the more than 9,000 paragraphs included in the audit reports for the years 1994 to 2008 that were presented in parliament, about 3,000 had not even received the first response from ministries despite the government’s acceptance of a four-month time frame for the submission of Action Taken Notes to the PAC”.

He said an equally pertinent issue was the lack of any statutory authority vested in the CAG for summoning officials and seeking evidence on oath, undertaking follow-up to the audit reports, fixing responsibility on officials.