India
The draft of the CAG report has been submitted to the defence ministry and comments of the stakeholders have been sought by the auditor of the nation and replies are being prepared for it, senior sources in the government told MyNation
New Delhi: Auditing the 36 Rafale deal signed under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) have also extensively probed the failed tender for 126 similar planes under the Congress government from 2007-2014.
The draft of the CAG report has been submitted to the defence ministry and comments of the stakeholders have been sought by the auditor of the nation and replies are being prepared for it, senior sources in the government told MyNation.
Apart from observations on the 36 plane deal worth over Rs 59,50 crore, the audit has also gone extensively into the Congress-era tender which had to be retracted in June 2015 due to procedural issues created during the Congress regime, the sources said.
It is learned that a number of red flags have been raised by the auditors over the procedures followed in the Congress deal, the sources said.
According to reports, the CAG is currently auditing around a dozen big-ticket arms deals closed by the defence ministry in the past few years.
Once the report is finalised by the CAG, it sends it to the respective ministry for its replies on the issues raised by it and includes it into the final report laid in Parliament.
In a recent report, the CAG head indicted the UPA government for wrongdoing in the over two-billion-dollar deal for procurement of eight naval spy planes.
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