The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India is an authority, established by the Constitution of India under article 148, who audits all receipts and expenditure of the Government of India.
The constitution makes the CAG the guardian of the public purse. Primary duty of CAG is to see that neither the union government nor the government of any state spends any money from the consolidated fund without legislative appropriation.
The Executive is answerable to Parliament and Parliament is answerable to the people for all its decisions, answerability of the executive is enforced through the CAG where it involves finance and accounts.
Parliament votes funds to the executive and those funds have to be accounted for. It also includes exercising prudence, avoiding waste, not incurring in fructuous expenditure, showing results for moneys spent, and achieving those results at least cost.
These reports will be debated in both houses of parliament also closely scrutinised by public account committee. But there is no voting takes place about finding of report.
Though it audits to ensure accountability, but it’s like a post-mortem that expenditure which was already spent, hence it won’t contain the expenditure. Still CAG report ensures accountability by parliamentary debates and discussion and may put tab on unnecessary future expenditure and also increases Governments income, as reports like commonwealth, Coal block allocation, 2G spectrum CAG has proved its worthiness.
