Reported by Indiatoday.intoday.in on July 10, 2012
HRD ministry 'blamed' for CAG's error : North, News - India Today

Despite the effort to pass the buck to the HRD ministry, it's the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) that was responsible for the faux pas that led to an inflated figure finding its way into a report tabled in Parliament, an RTI reply has revealed.

After Mail Today reported an oversight in the report on April 30 that erroneously accused the HRD ministry of not being able to account for Rs.1.16 lakh crore in 2009-10 instead of Rs.1,167 crore, the CAG spokesperson had claimed that though the figure was a mistake, it was never contested by the ministry even when it was pointed out.

However, an RTI reply filed by Mail Today has now revealed that the watchdog is indeed guilty of committing one of the most basic accounting errors: typographical error.

In a letter written to CAG on May 3, the HRD ministry has provided a history of the communication shared between them on the matter of pending utilisation certificates (UCs) and clearly pointed out that the value of the outstanding UCs in letters sent by CAG was in fact in lakh and not in crore and hence it wasn't contested by the ministry.

In fact, the last letter dated January 6, 2012 from the CAG mentioned the figure of pending UCs correctly. "How these figures got converted from lakhs to crores may be best known to your office," states the HRD ministry letter.