Only 18 audit reports on the Centre by the comptroller and auditor general of India were tabled in Parliament in 2023, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.

An analysis by the newspaper showed that the number of audits on the Union government by the authority has seen a declining trend in recent years. While on an average, 40 such reports were tabled in Parliament each year from 2014 to 2018, an average of only 22 reports were tabled annually from 2019 to 2023.

In four of the last six years, 20 or fewer audit reports were tabled in Parliament.

The analysis by The Hindu showed that only 14 audit reports on the Railways were published in the last five years, as against 27 reports in the preceding five-year period. On similar lines, only 34 reports on the civil department were tabled in the past five years as compared to 42 reports in the preceding five years.

The latest report on the defence department that is publicly available dates back to 2017.

On November 4, a group of retired civil servants had also noted in a letter to President Droupadi Murmu that the number of audit reports relating to the Centre’s functioning submitted by the Comptroller and Auditor General before Parliament has shown a declining trend in recent years.

“This means either that the working of the CAG has slowed down, or that the organisation, despite detection of flaws in expenditure by the government, is reluctant to present this to Parliament and make the information public,” the letter to the president, signed by 86 ex-bureaucrats, said.

The former bureaucrats, who are part of the Constitutional Conduct Group, said that the comptroller and auditor general does not appear to be discharging its duties with the same speed and standards as earlier.

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