The government has never conducted the audit of national defence fund (NDF), the corpus of which is Rs 723 crore.

The cabinet secretariat gave this information in response to an application filed under the right to information (RTI) act.

The fund is administered by an executive committee, with prime minister as chairperson, and defence, finance and home ministers as members.

In October, Governance Now filed a RTI query in the prime minister’s office (PMO) asking for rules and regulations regarding the NDF audit. 

In response, the PMO informed that the audit of the NDF was conducted by the comptroller and auditor general (C&AG) and the accounts of the fund were maintained by the pay and accounts office, cabinet secretariat.

RTI queries were then filed in both the mentioned offices.

Office of the C&AG transferred the query to the director general of audit, defence services, which said that it did not have any information on the fund.
However, in response to the RTI application, the cabinet secretariat gave a copy of it’s communication with the pay and accounts office, cabinet affairs.

According to the document, audit of the office (pay and accounts office, cabinet affairs) as a whole is being conducted by the C&AG.

“The last audit was conducted in January 2010. No separate audit of NDF has ever been conducted and no annual audit statements were issued,” said the reply by Mohinder Singh, pay & accounts officer, dated November 8, 2010.

“Moreover, there is no audit comment on this fund in any audit report of this office,” it further said.

It was also informed that the pay and accounts office, cabinet affairs complied the accounts of NDF on the basis of receipts and payment scrolls from RBI and made necessary adjustments of interests sanctioned by ministry of finance.

Earlier, in response to the RTI application filed by Chhattisgarh resident Mujibur Rehman, the cabinet secretatiat had informed that there was no audit of the fund.

Rehman had filed RTI queries asking, among other things, the expenses and audit report of two funds- national calamity fund and national defense fund.