Thiruvananthapuram: A decision has been taken to outsource the CAG audit due to reduction of staff in the Accountant General (AG) offices in states, including Kerala. The new way is to assign Chartered Accountants (CAs) to conduct audits in autonomous bodies, and public and local government bodies on a contract basis for two years, starting from July 2025 to March 2027.

The letter announces that such audits can be conducted at 40 centers in different states, including Kochi and Kozhikode in Kerala.

The CAs are being appointed in the positions held by the officers of the Indian Audit and Accounts (IAAD) department who were in the Civil Service rank lists. It was solely through the excellence of these IAAD offices that irregularities in various projects were uncovered. The authorities also claim that the audit of CAs will be supervised and inspected by the audit officers of the CAG.

Corruption will prevail, diminishing the trust

The CAG has implemented a new rule in auditing policies. Now, the CA firms are given contracts to conduct auditing. However, criticisms are arising on the transparency of conducting these audits, as these firms could easily fall into corrupt practices.

The central and state governments usually give crores of rupees as grants and loans to various autonomous bodies. The CA professionals are engaged in submitting the reports to the Government, but the contradiction is that these CAs themselves audit the same accounts for the CAG.

The standards and strictness in CAG audits may not be reflected in the auditing by the CAs, which will affect the reliability of CAG reports.

The order is suicidal, say employees

The act of CAG inviting the letter of interest for auditing from C A qualifiers is against the spirit of the Constitution and is more like a suicidal statement, says the All India Audit and Account Officers Association. In a letter, the association demands to cancel this act and urge CAG to appoint the necessary number of employees to fulfill its constitutional obligation for auditing, said the association's president Binod Kumar Upadhyay and secretary general O.S. Sudhakaran.

Employees are opting for voluntary retirement

Due to the Central Government's undeclared Prohibition Law, the employees at various Accountant General (AG) offices are opting for voluntary retirement, in masses, because of the excessive workload. Many employees are planning to take voluntary retirement next year after the pay revision as per the Eighth Pay Commission recommendation implementation.

Earlier, the ratio was one officer per 600 employees to check the service-related matters. But now, as the number of employees has declined, the ratio has changed to one for 1000 employees. With this, the workload has also increased. AG officials are assuming that more employees will take voluntary retirement once the Eighth Pay Commission recommendation comes into force.

It has been nine years since the posts have been cut down. There were 2045 posts in 2016. The employees were then reduced to 1181. During COVID, Group D posts were completely stopped, and clerical posts were revamped, reducing the number of employees to 1500. Currently, this has only 500 employees only. Less than 30 percent of the employees are now in various AG offices across the state.

Please don't shut AG offices: A A Rahim, M P

A A Rahim MP wrote a letter to the CAG requesting not to shut down the AG regional offices in Kerala. The letter was sent after noticing the news item in Mathrubhumi on the issue.

A A Rahim points out that the reduction of employees will seriously affect the various activities, including auditing in the state, and also requested to make immediate appointments to the existing posts to avoid any further difficulties.