NEW DELHI Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai demits office on May 23 as one of the most politically divisive CAG in Indian history. Rai’s audit reports on 2G spectrum allocation and the coal block allocations have arguably brought ‘policy paralysis’, but his earlier stint in government was known for just the opposite.

“Rai, in his tenure as economic affairs secretary was particularly known to cut through red tape,” said his junior in the ministry. He reportedly got the incorporation of India Infrastructure Finance Company done in a weekend, just because finance minister P Chidambaram wanted to announce it in the 2006 budget speech. A 1972-batch Kerala cadre officer , Rai was known in the state, and during central deputation, for his impeccable integrity.“We were batchmates and cadre mates, and had district postings for many years in Kerala. His stint in the state never saw him come into conflict with the political class. This is the first time that criticism from any politician has come his way,” said former planning secretary Sudha Pillai Indeed high praise from the contingent of Malayali politicians in Delhi helped swing opinion in his favour for appointment as CAG. “As a CAG, he is a constitutional authority. In my view, he has done to CAG’s office what TN Seshan did for the Election Commission ,” said former cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian. “Even then, politicians complained about interference but elections have been the better for it,” he added.However, government managers say that Rai should have calculated not just the intended consequences of his actions, but unintended ones too. “It was one of UPA government ’s biggest mistakes,” says AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh, on Rai’s appointment.The miniscule probe into what the political class terms its discretionary decision-making abilities has cut deep. In an interview to ET, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said that audits appeared to show that UPA-II was full of scams. “But the time has come to discuss certain organisations and public utterances of certain organisation heads like CAG. At least in the last 45 years, nobody was thinking of reading CAG reports and CAG heads were not addressing press conferences, creating sensation.”Former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen, attributes Sharad Pawar’s reaction to Rai ‘reclaiming pre-eminence’ of CAG office. “My father was a bureaucrat in the 1960s, and I remember that he panicked before an audit report was due; in the 1990s, nobody bothered about it. Rai has brought back CAG into focus,” he said.The conflict between the political class and Rai stems on different interpretations of the same job. For the political class, CAG is a cut and dried numbers man, whereas Rai feels, “public auditors should seek to sensitise public opinion on our audit observations. It focuses the minds of the custodians of the public purse to use resources effectively, as they know that after audit scrutiny, the public will be aware of their actions”. Conflicting semiotics between accounts and accountability, it seems, is here to stay.