In further embarrassment to Congress, the Comptroller and Auditor General is understood to have rapped the Sheila Dikshit government in Delhi for irregularities in certain contracts related to the Commonwealth Games.
Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai on Wednesday rejected reports that there was pressure from Parliament's Public Accounts Committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi to expedite audit work of 2G spectrum allocation and said no findings were ever shared with the PAC.
Cairn India and UK's BG Group too replied to audit observations.
Artificial scarcity and lack of clarity on available bandwidth blamed for scam.
All set for more public interactions even as PM has been critical of the apex auditor recently.
Concerned over the frequent leaks of its "half baked reports", the office of the Union comptroller and auditor-general (CAG) has decided to issue different versions of its draft reports -- the ones given for feedback and reactions before the final version is readied -- to ministries and public sector units to nail the sources of leaks.
The apex auditor is busy preparing a report on the Air India-Indian Airlines merger and modernisation of airports through public-private-partnerships, both carried out during the previous term of the United Progressive Alliance government.
The auditor said that in the case of performance audit on hydrocarbon production sharing contracts, 'interactive meetings were held with two operators, including RIL, prior to the finalisation of the draft performance audit report'.
Days after a CAG draft report said his firm got out of turn favours from the oil ministry and its technical arm DGH, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani on Friday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Asking the Central Bureau of Investigation to respect the line that divides between policy making and policing, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday came down heavily on investigating agencies and Comptroller and Auditor General for "overstepping" their limits by attempting to convert bonafide executive decisions into either crimes or abuse of authority.
The comptroller and auditor general has unearthed a Rs 450-crore scam involving the purchase of Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles by the Hyderabad-based National Technical Research Organisation, a technical arm of the external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing. In the first ever audit of any intelligence agency in India, it was found that these UAVs were lying as junk.
A high level committee, which went into alleged financial irregularities in Commonwealth Games, has strongly indicted suspended Prasar Bharti CEO B S Lalli and Doordarshan Director General Aruna Sharma, accusing them of "collusion" with a UK-based firm which benefited Rs 135 crore in the broadcast deal.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday cornered the government for 'defending' Chief Vigilance Commissioner P J Thomas in the Supreme Court, asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi as to what was the 'compulsion' to defend the 'tainted' official and attack the upright comptroller and auditor general.
Describing these as non-working companies, the CAG in its latest report on the state tabled in the Maharashtra Assembly stated that since no purpose may be served by keeping these units in existence, the state government needs to expedite closing down of these non-working PSUs.
He also cautioned against politicisation of defence purchases, suggesting that this had earlier led to the delay in the army acquiring the Bofors gun.
In popular perception, the villain of the piece is former civil aviation minister Praful Patel.
The embassy observations are part of a confidential official cable released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks on August 30.
Reliance Industries was to relinquish 25 per cent of the gas-bearing KG-D6 block in 2004 and a similar area in 2006 but the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, which was at that time headed by V K Sibal, concluded that hydrocarbon prospectivity "extends over entire block and hence no block area needed to be relinquished."
Terming the move for getting of a "large number" of planes as "risky", the CAG said the aircraft acquisition had "contributed predominantly" to the airline's massive debt liability of Rs 38,423 crore (Rs 384.23 billion) as on March 31 last year.
The CAG, in its much-awaited report tabled in Parliament on Thursday, did not say if the capital expenditure for KG-D6 being raised from $2.4 billion proposed in 2004 to $8.8 billion in 2006 was unjustified or inflated.
Government auditor CAG also noted in a report that these demands are "unrealisable 100 per cent".
The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) has pulled up the company secretaries of two telecom companies whose names have been mentioned in the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG's) report on the controversial allotment of airwaves. The two officials named in the report are Hari Nair, representing Swan Telecom, and Vidyadhar Chakradeo, the company secretary of Loop Telecom.
"This is a big scam. The country is being looted. Please allow us to speak," Congress leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said.
Something can be done, provided we are willing to tackle the problem at its source rather than deal only with outrageous cases of corruption that are brought to the surface by the media, says Bimal Jalan.
Under fire following Comptroller and Auditor General report indicting her and her government for irregularities in the Commonwealth Games projects, Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit on Saturday said action will be taken if any wrongdoing is found by the Public Accounts Committee looking into the issue.
Government auditor Comptroller and Auditor General has started a comprehensive audit into the role of armed forces, Coast Guard and Colaba administration in land allotment to the scam-tainted Adarsh Housing Society.
Vinod Rai, former Comptroller and Auditor General of India, former India women's captain Diana Edulji and banker Vikram Limaye were present at the meeting held at the IDFC Bank's premises in suburban Bandra-Kurla Complex.
The report was tabled by deputy chief minister S K Modi in the state assembly.
A historian, a retired auditor and a financial executive were among four people named by India's highest court on Monday to run the country's cricket board (BCCI).
Parliament's Public Accounts Committee chairperson M M Joshi on Thursday indicated that overlapping of functions of the panel and the Joint Parliamentary Committee into 2G spectrum scam was not a matter of concern and his powers went beyond the Comptroller and Auditor General report.
Carved out of southern Bihar as a new state on November 15, 2000, Jharkhand has been plagued by adverse conditions -- low average income, high incidence of poverty and little social development because of political instability -- there have been seven government changes.
The civil aviation ministry initiated and then made a mess of the merger of the erstwhile Indian Airlines with Air India, according to a Comptroller and Auditor General report.
With the figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore loss in 2G spectrum allocation being disputed, Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai and other officials of the government auditor will be asked to appear before the Joint Parliamentary Committee looking into the issue.
According to reports, CAG has sought details from the department of telecommunication on the total available spectrum in the country and how much has been allocated to private telecom operators from 2000 onward and at what value.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) will start the audit work of Commonwealth Games Village in New Delhi from October 28 to probe allegations of financial irregularities.
Sources say that the constitution of the high-level committee headed by former Comptroller and Auditor General VK Shungloo to look into the organising and conduct of the Games, is just phase one of the clean-up ops.
The documents include the Cabinet note on the policy prepared by DoT and papers related to the decision to clear the policy by the then Congress Cabinet.
Jaitley assured the Lok Sabha amid the ongoing standoff between Indian and Chinese military in the Doklam area.
Even as the United Progressive Alliance government continues to be in a tizzy over the Central Vigilance C's appointment, sources say that PJ Thomas has refused to quit, primarily because he feels that he is an honest man and because as the central vigilance commissioner he enjoys immunity against prosecution, particularly in corruption cases.
Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai on Monday appeared before the Joint Parliamentary Committee, which is probing the 2G spectrum scam, to explain how the government auditor quantified the losses in the spectrum allocation at Rs 1.76 lakh crore. Rai was asked to brief the Committee, chaired by Congress leader P C Chacko, on the allocation and pricing of telecom licences and spectrum during 1998 to 2009.
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