The Minister for Rural Development, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said that performance audit of MGNREGA for all the States will be placed before Parliament by the end of the Winter Session.

Speaking to newspersons after meeting the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) here, Mr Ramesh said that his Ministry would receive the draft report by October-end. By November last week, the report will be finalised to present it before Parliament.

He said the performance audit of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme would cover the period from 2007 to 2011. His Ministry spends about Rs 40,000 crore annually on the scheme, he said.

Audit of the Indira Aawas Yojana will be taken up next year and the audit system will be extended to other schemes of the Ministry gradually.

The Minister also said that from this year, it will be compulsory for every Gram Panchayat to be certified by a chartered accountant drawn up from a district-level panel prepared by CAG.

Given the popularity of convergence in MGNREGA, efforts will be made to follow it up more vigorously. But, in the process of convergence, separate accounts of each schemes must be maintained, otherwise it will jeopardise the integrity of the audit system, he added.

Further, the Ministry will revisit the convergence guidelines to make it more amenable to the modern audit system, an official release said.

Referring to problems due to different system of audits followed by accountant generals of the States in the drinking water supply scheme, Mr Ramesh said that CAG would ensure that all the States follow the Tamil Nadu model of audit, which is an integrated system supervised by a Board.

> richam@thehindu.co.in

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