The audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India is examined by

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Public Accounts Committee. The chain is fixed by the Constitution. Under Article 151 the Comptroller and Auditor General submits his reports on the accounts of the Union to the President, who causes them to be laid before each House of Parliament. Laying the report is where the CAG's job ends and Parliament's begins — the CAG can audit and report, but he cannot summon, question or recommend action. That work is done by the Public Accounts Committee, which takes up the CAG's audit reports along with the Appropriation Accounts and the Finance Accounts, calls the secretaries of the ministries concerned before it, and reports its findings back to the House. This is the PAC's defining function; the Committee is often described as the twin of the CAG, because neither is much use without the other.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The Committee on Public Undertakings is real and it does read CAG material, but only the narrow slice of it that relates to public sector undertakings — their accounts, autonomy and efficiency. The CAG's audit report on the accounts of the Union as a whole, which is what the question asks about, goes to the Public Accounts Committee. COPU was in fact carved out in 1964 to take that specialised load off the PAC.  (b) The Estimates Committee looks forward, not back. It examines the Budget estimates to suggest economies and better organisation — it has been called a 'continuous economy committee' — and it has no role in examining audit reports of money already spent. It is also the only one of the three financial committees drawn entirely from the Lok Sabha, and with 30 members it is the largest committee of Parliament.  (d) One of the three named committees is exactly right, so this cannot be. 'None of the above' is worth choosing only when you can positively rule out every option; here the Public Accounts Committee's whole reason for existing is to examine the CAG's reports.

Concept: India's financial control over the executive works in three stages: Parliament votes the money, the government spends it, and the Comptroller and Auditor General audits the spending afterwards. The audit is useless unless someone acts on it, so Parliament routes the CAG's reports to its financial committees. There are three of them — the Public Accounts Committee, the Estimates Committee and the Committee on Public Undertakings — and they divide the work by stage and by sector: the Estimates Committee scrutinises proposed spending, the PAC scrutinises past spending against the CAG's audit, and COPU does the same for public sector undertakings.

State PCS 2022 Q22 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q22 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer