Comptroller and Auditor General: Articles 148–151, Reports and the PAC

He is called the Comptroller and Auditor General, and he is not a Comptroller. That is not a quibble about words. It is the single fact from which the whole chapter follows, and almost no revision note says it out loud.

This is the eighth capsule in our polity depth series, going a level below the Constitution capsule, for SSC CGL and CHSL, RRB NTPC, State PSC, banking general awareness and UPSC Prelims.

The Hinge: A Name That Describes a Job He Does Not Do

A Comptroller, in the original British sense, controls the issue of public money. Nothing leaves the exchequer without his authority. He stands at the gate.

An Auditor examines money that has already been spent. He stands at the exit, with a notebook.

Now use it as a decoder. Almost any question that begins ‘can the CAG…’ is answered by asking whether it happens before or after the money is spent.

• Can the CAG stop an irregular payment? No. He will report it, afterwards.
• Can the CAG refuse to release funds to a department? No. He has no hand on the tap.
• Can the CAG punish anyone? No. He writes; Parliament acts, or does not.
• Then where does his power come from? From what happens to his report, which is the rest of this capsule.

Articles 148 to 151, One Line Each

Article 149 is the quiet one and it matters. The Constitution does not list what the CAG audits. It says Parliament will decide. So the CAG’s job description sits in an ordinary Act that Parliament can amend by simple majority — a striking contrast with the near-total protection given to the officer himself.

Appointment, Term and Removal

Every row in that table is a protection, and you have seen this shape before. It is exactly the design we sorted out in the UPSC capsule: judge-grade removal, salary charged rather than voted, and a bar on later employment so that nobody can be rewarded for obliging. Maximum independence, minimum power — and the CAG is the purest example of it in the Constitution.

The removal cross-reference is worth holding on to, because it appears again and again: the CAG, the Chief Election Commissioner and a Public Service Commission member are all protected by reference to a Supreme Court judge, whose own removal is set out in our Supreme Court capsule. Learn the judge’s procedure once and you have learned four offices.

What He Audits

From the DPC Act, 1971:

• All expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India, of each State and of each Union Territory having a legislature — and specifically whether the money was legally available for the purpose it was spent on.
• All transactions relating to the Contingency Fund and the Public Account.
• Trading, manufacturing, profit and loss accounts kept by any department.
• Government companies and corporations, under the Companies Act or their own statutes.
• Bodies and authorities substantially financed from Union or State revenues, and any body receiving a grant or loan for a specific purpose.

And what he does not reach. Secret service expenditure is the clearest limit: the CAG cannot call for particulars and must accept a certificate from the competent authority that the money was spent properly. That is the one place where the auditor is asked to take somebody’s word for it, and it is a favourite question.

Three kinds of audit are worth naming, because the words appear in questions:

The Three Reports

The CAG submits three audit reports to the President, who causes them to be laid before Parliament.

Keep the pair straight: appropriation accounts are about whether the money went where Parliament said it should; finance accounts are about what came in and what went out. Appropriation is the promise; finance is the bank statement.

Follow the Report — Where the Power Actually Is

This is the part that makes the office worth studying, and it is a chain rather than a fact.

The Public Accounts Committee has 22 members — 15 from the Lok Sabha and 7 from the Rajya Sabha — and by convention its chairman is a member of the Opposition. A minister cannot be a member of it. The CAG is described as the guide, friend and philosopher of the PAC, a phrase that turns up in answer keys as often as any fact in this chapter.

Now notice the shape, because this is its third appearance in this series. The Model Code of Conduct in our Election Commission capsule binds nobody in law. The UPSC’s advice under Article 323 binds nobody either, and its only sanction is a memorandum explaining every rejection. The CAG cannot stop, recover or punish anything — his report simply has to be placed before a legislature and examined in public.

That is a standing feature of Indian constitutional design, and it deserves a name: accountability by embarrassment. Several of the most respected institutions in the system have no power to compel anybody. What they have is the right to be heard in a place the government cannot control. If you can write that sentence in a descriptive answer, you have understood something most candidates never state.

The 1976 Separation of Accounts from Audit

Until 1976 the CAG did two jobs that sit badly together: he compiled the government’s accounts and then audited them.

Nobody should audit a set of books he wrote himself. So from 1976 the CAG was relieved of compiling the Union government’s accounts, which passed to the departments themselves. He still compiles the accounts of most States, which is why the split is only partial and why the question is asked.

Traps Worth Marking

• The CAG has no control over the issue of money. He is a Comptroller in name only.
• He is removed like a Supreme Court judge, not by the President at will.
• He is a single person, not a body — unlike the Election Commission or a Public Service Commission.
• His duties come from an ordinary Act of Parliament (the DPC Act, 1971), not from the Constitution.
• Secret service expenditure is accepted on a certificate; he cannot demand particulars.
• His salary is charged on the Consolidated Fund, so it is not voted on annually.
• State reports go to the Governor, not to the President.
• The PAC chairman is from the Opposition by convention, and a minister cannot sit on it.
• The 1976 change removed Union accounts from him, not State accounts.

Five Practice Questions

Q1. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India can be removed…
(a) by the President at his discretion (b) in the same manner and on the same grounds as a judge of the Supreme Court (c) by a simple majority of the Lok Sabha (d) by the Public Accounts Committee
Answer: (b) in the same manner and on the same grounds as a judge of the Supreme Court The same protection is given to the Chief Election Commissioner and to members of the Public Service Commissions, so learning the judge’s procedure once covers four offices.

Q2. Which article requires the CAG’s reports on Union accounts to be laid before Parliament?
(a) Article 148 (b) Article 149 (c) Article 150 (d) Article 151
Answer: (d) Article 151 148 creates the office, 149 leaves his duties to Parliament to prescribe, and 150 concerns the form in which accounts are kept.

Q3. The duties and powers of the CAG are laid down by…
(a) the Constitution itself (b) an Act of Parliament (c) rules made by the President (d) a resolution of the Public Accounts Committee
Answer: (b) an Act of Parliament Article 149 leaves them to Parliament, which passed the Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service Act in 1971. His job description is therefore easier to change than his own position is.

Q4. The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee is, by convention…
(a) the Speaker of the Lok Sabha (b) the Finance Minister (c) a member of the Opposition (d) the Comptroller and Auditor General
Answer: (c) a member of the Opposition A minister cannot even be a member of the committee. The CAG assists it but does not chair it, and is described as its guide, friend and philosopher.

Q5. Which of these is NOT fully open to the CAG’s audit?
(a) Expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India (b) Transactions of the Contingency Fund (c) Accounts of government companies (d) Secret service expenditure
Answer: (d) Secret service expenditure There he must accept a certificate from the competent authority that the money was properly spent, and cannot call for the particulars. It is the one place the auditor is asked to take somebody’s word for it.

Ten more questions on this and today’s Current Affairs explainer are waiting on our Test Your Knowledge page, with a free PDF.

Sources: the Constitution of India, Articles 148 to 151; the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971, and the CAG’s own pages on its constitutional provisions and on that Act; and standard published accounts of the Public Accounts Committee and of the 1976 separation of accounts from audit. Dr Ambedkar’s remark on the office is quoted in several forms in different sources and is therefore paraphrased rather than quoted here.