Apex auditor CAG on Friday lamented that private telecom operators are not providing their account books to it, despite a request from the government.
"In the telecom sector, we have still not got access to records of private service providers despite the request for such audit coming from the government itself," Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Vinod Rai said.
The Department of Telecom had earlier asked five leading telecom companies - Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone Essar and state-run BSNL - to give their accounting details for three years from 2006-07 to CAG.
The move is aimed at auditing accounts of these telecom operators to ensure they paid proper revenue share to the government as per the telecom licence rules.
DoT has asked the companies to give service-wise revenues among other details for last the three financial years.
Rai also pitched for bringing audit of regulators like TRAI under its ambit. He said regulators like TRAI, Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board have been kept fully or partially out of the audit mandate of CAG through their respective Acts.
There is now a similar proposal in the Brain Gain Policy of the Human Resources Development Ministry, Rai added.
"With increased deregulation of different sectors of the economy and the government modifying its role from an active player to that of a catalyst, allowing for increased participation of private and non-governmental organisations with their activities being regulated through appropriate regulators, the accountability of the regulatory bodies themselves become a major issue," CAG said.
Rai said while the expenditure of these bodies may not be large, but the impact of the decisions taken by them have extremely large impact.
He also asked the government to replace the present CAG's Act with a new legislation to address constraints faced by it. When asked the government's views on bringing audit of regulators under the ambit of CAG and new legislation, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters later, "Various suggestions have come... goverment's intentions will be known when the bill is introduced in Parliament."
He did not give any timeframe for introducing the bill. When asked about the CAG's query to the Telecom Ministry over telecom licences issued in 2008, Mukherjee said, "When we receive the (CAG) report, we will see."
CAG had earlier sought clarifications from the telecom ministry on issue of licences to service providers in 2008, which allegedly cost the exchequer Rs 26,000 crore (Rs 260 billion). However, CAG's annual report on the issue is yet to come.
