RTI reveals Chennai Corporation hasn’t carried out annual audit since 2009
1 Jan, 2014
An application was filed with the Chennai Municipal Corporation under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get information about the annual audit reports that are mandated to be tabled in the corporation council every year.
The reply from the corporation states that though it has received around 3,600 crore for the fiscal year 2013-14, it is the only civic body of a metropolitan city in the country which has not carried out its annual audit for four successive years. The local fund audit department said in the reply that the municipal corporation has not published an audit report since 2009. It said that the audit report for the fiscal year 2010-11 is ready but has not yet been issued due to the non-production of annual accounts by different departments of the corporation. For the year 2013-14, the department said that the audit report is in progress. However, the reply doesn’t provide any account of the audit reports for the fiscals 2011-12 and 2012-13.
It has been argued that the lack of audits could mean that the corporation does not follow procedural norms in civic projects and said that it should notify the public about the reasons for its failure to publish audit reports and also initiate action against the officials responsible for the missing audits. However, an official from the local fund audit department said that most of the departments deliberately delay the filing of reports or provide incomplete information as there is no penalty provision for such actions.