Annual reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) listing its concerns as to financial practices are always taken very seriously, cabinet minister Paul Lyngdoh said today.
The state government has come in for criticism in recent days after the CAG said that Meghalaya has a poor record when it comes to replying to audit concerns, going back decades.
A whooping 3,639 paragraphs are yet to be replied to by the various departments of the state over a period of 33 years.
The CAG report on Social and Economic Sectors for the year ended 31 March 2022 pointed out that “analysis of the position of outstanding paragraphs showed that 3,639 paragraphs relating to the period from 1988-89 to March 2022 were outstanding.”
Out of this 1,789 paragraphs are more than five years old. The report said that out of the total 3,639 outstanding paragraphs pertaining to 700 Inspection Reports ( IR), the CAG was yet to get even the first reply against 792 paragraphs pertaining to 116 IRs from the audited departments.
“The CAG report has always been taken very seriously by the state government,” Lyngdoh said on the sidelines of a programme today. “And I say this with authority because I was a member and then a chairman of the PAC (Public Accounts Committee, an oversight arm of the Assembly) and the PAC is supposed to be a mini-Assembly.”
The minister promised that whichever department that has had irregularities listed by the CAG will be “looked at with the seriousness it deserves”. Of recent concern to the CAG has been the Power Department in its implementation of the Saubhagya scheme where contractors were said to have benefited unduly by crores of rupees.
Meanwhile, Lyngdoh concluded by reminding the reporters that the CAG report tabled this year is for prior years when he was not in the government.
