Three Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IA & AS) officers in charge of the audit reports that exposed corruption in Union government ministries have been transferred by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
A report in The Wire said the three officers were involved in two reports that exposed corruption and irregularities in the Dwarka Expressway project, under Bharatmala Phase-1 and the Ayushman Bharat scheme. These reports were part of 12 CAG reports that exposed corruption and irregularities were presented in August 2023 during the monsoon session of the Parliament.
The Wire report named the transferred officers as Atoorva Sinha, Principal Director Audit, Infrastructure and Dattaprasad Suryakant Shirsat, Director (AMG II), Director General of Audit, Central Expenditure, New Delhi. While Atoorva Sinha has been transferred as Accountant General (A&E) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Dattaprasad Suryakant Shirsat has been transferred and posted as Director (legal) in the same office in New Delhi.
While Sinha was in charge of the report on the implementation of Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-1, Shirsat was in charge of the Performance Audit of the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana under the Union ministry of Health.
Another officer Ashok Sinha, Director General (North Central Region), who initiated the performance audit of Ayushman Bharat scheme has also been transferred, the report said.
The CAG report on the Phase-I of Bharatmala Pariyojana flagged several deficiencies in the appraisal and approval mechanism and cost overruns in Engineering Procurement and Construction projects.These projects included the Delhi-Vadodara Expressway and the Dwarka Expressway.
The Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs (CCEA) had originally given nod to an average construction cost of Rs 18.2 crore per km but the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) decision to opt for an elevated carriageway in Haryana pushed up the cost to over 250 crore per km.
The CAG report on Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana revealed that around 750,000 beneficiaries of the scheme were associated with a single invalid mobile number.
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