Comptroller and Auditor General pulls down parts of audit reports on Defence Ministry’s request
The deleted portion included data on Indo-China border roads, arms management, the Army Aviation Corps’ functioning and a deficit of armored vehicles.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has pulled down some parts of its recent audit reports from its website and removed all references online, The Times of India reported on Tuesday.
The deleted parts are from audit reports on the Indo-China border roads, ammunition management, functioning of the Army Aviation Corps and a shortfall in the availability of armored vehicles in the Army.
A senior official from the Comptroller and Auditor General said that the reports were taken down because the Ministry of Defence had requested it. Such “sensitive reports” have been shared only with members of the Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee in the past, he added.
Performance audit report 5 of 2017, which dealt with the Indo-China border roads, is one of the documents that was pulled down. Clicking on the link on the website opens a PDF document that says: “For the contents of this paragraph/report, printed version of the relevant report may be referred to”.
In March, the Comptroller and Auditor General had highlighted the delay in constructing 61 important India-China Border Roads. “All 61 India-China Border Roads included in the Border Roads Development Board programme were planned to be completed by 2012,” the CAG report had said. “However, only 15 roads were completed by 2012.” Of the remaining roads, only seven were completed by March 2016, extending the completion date to 2021, the audit report added.
In compliance audit report 44 of 2015, paragraphs 3.1 and 3.2 dealt with a review of the functioning of the Army Aviation Corps and a shortfall of BMP vehicles used by the infantry in the Indian Army. They have been deleted and replaced with: “For the contents of this paragraph/report, printed version of the relevant report may be referred to.”
The report, released in December 2015, had said that the Army had a shortage of at least 47% of BMP infantry vehicles, mostly because the ordnance factory had failed to supply these vehicles on time. It had also said that in the Army Aviation Corps, there was a 32% deficiency in its authorised fleet strength, and its Cheetah and Chetak helicopters are old and ageing with more than 50% of the fleet older than 30 years.