Vinod Rai Vinod Rai

On October 9, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram was due to address a conference of Accountants General at the imposing headquarters of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in the heart of the Capital. During the course of private light-hearted banter between him and CAG Vinod Rai, the minister said he regretted having picked Rai as the country's top auditor in January 2008-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had approved the appointment. At the same conference, President Pranab Mukherjee noted the shift Rai had brought from "routine compliance audit to a more macro perspective" but cautioned against overreach. Rai's own pithy take: "We cannot don the role of cheerleaders for the Government."Manmohan was invited to the conference but chose not to attend. On November 11, minister of state in his office V. Narayanasamy indicated that the Government wanted to curtail CAG's powers by making it a multi-member body. It was clear as day: The 1972-batch Kerala-cadre ias officer had rattled the Government in a most unprecedented way. After a period of judicial activism, it was time for CAG activism.In 2012, Rai consistently embarrassed the Government with scathing reports, questioning wasteful spending of public funds and underlining cases of misgovernance. On August 17, CAG laid three reports in Parliament-on coal block allocation, the Delhi airport and ultra-mega power projects. The one on coal said there was a scam that caused a loss of Rs 1.86 lakh crore to the exchequer and laid the blame at the door of the Prime Minister, who was in charge of the coal portfolio at the time of allocation. Manmohan termed the loss figure "clearly disputable" and found the report "flawed on multiple counts". Rai, a Delhi School of Economics and Harvard University alumnus, can match wits over figures with the best in the business but chose not to join issue. The report on Delhi airport said the civil aviation ministry had violated bid conditions to benefit the GMR-led Delhi International Airport Ltd by Rs 3,415 crore. The third CAG report flayed post-bid concessions to Reliance Power and said the Anil Ambani-led company got undue benefits of Rs 29,033 crore.CAG's audit machinery thus made an entry into the private sector, leaving Corporate India fuming. Rai has been asking for a change in the Audit Act, 1971, since September 2009 to enable CAG to examine any institution where public funds are involved. While the Government ignored Rai, he found his own way of auditing them, albeit partially. The Delhi airport, for example, is a special purpose vehicle between Airports Authority of India (AAI) and GMR. CAG managed to audit it by examining the deals of AAI, a government body.The Government is waiting for May 23, 2013, when Rai will turn 65 and complete his eventful tenure. The appointment of a more pliable person may follow. But Rai believes the institution stands galvanised. He says it is up to officials to ensure the systems put in place continue to function irrespective of who heads it.He is waiting to hang his accounting hat and take to wearing his tennis shoes and mountaineering boots more often-two activities he loves.