On board special aircraft, June 6: As demands for thorough scrutiny of spending of public funds grow, vice-president Hamid Ansari on Sunday said citizens have every right to know how the tax-payers money is being spent by the government to implement various programmes.
He also said that if any funds spent by the government did not come under the scrutiny of Comptroller and Auditor General of India then it was nothing but a “lacuna”.
“With the changing direction in which the public funds are going, the public, through its representative in Parliament, has a right to know whether the money is being spent correctly, incorrectly, what manners and in accordance of mandate or not,” he told reporters accompanying him to his two-nation tour of Czech Republic and Croatia.
He was asked to give his views on demands for accountability in spending public funds. Mr Ansari said the manner in which public funds were being channeled for public purposes was changing and it is not the same what it was when the Constitution was adopted.
Asked whether bodies like Comptroller and Auditor General of India was nothing but “tooth-less tigers”, the vice-president said it was not correct to say so as CAG was an institution which was created by the Constitution and it has a place in it. “I don’t think they are tooth-less. The public accounts committee is a very powerful body and the CAG reports are considered by the PAC. It is not correct to say that CAG reports are teeth-less. There is a procedure and the procedure has to follow,” he said.
On whether spending of all government funds should be brought under the scrutiny of CAG, Mr Ansari said he had discussed the issue when he had visited Shimla recently to attend the Golden Jubilee celebration of Audit and Accounts Academy.
“My view there (in Shimla) was that anything in which public money is going out of the consolidated funds of the government of India, should be brought within the realm of CAG. If it is not actually so, it is probably a lacuna. But this is something in which the government would have to take a view, the Parliament would have to take a view,” he said. —PTI