India's Comptroller and Auditor General Can Be Removed Only the Way a Supreme Court Judge Can, and Every Audit Report Goes Before Parliament or a State Legislature

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (the CAG) is appointed by the President, can be removed only by the process used for a Supreme Court judge, and may never hold another government post afterwards. Article 148 of the Constitution says so, and it took effect with most of the main text on 26 January 1950. The institution is older than the Republic: the CAG’s press release for Audit Diwas on 16 November 2025 says the day marks the onset of the 166th year of its establishment.

The CAG audits the accounts of the Union government and of the States, and its reports are laid before Parliament and the State legislatures. Below: who the auditor is, what the law lets it examine, how a finding reaches a legislature’s table, and what became of two of its best-known reports.

Who the Constitution makes the auditor

Article 148(1) says the CAG is appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal, and can be removed only in the same manner and on the same grounds as a Supreme Court judge. For a judge, Article 124(4) allows removal only for proved misbehaviour or incapacity. Each House of Parliament must pass an address asking for it, backed by a majority of its total membership and at least two thirds of the members present and voting, and both addresses must reach the President in the same session. Our explainer on what the President of India does covers the appointing side.

Three more protections sit in the same Article. Salary, leave, pension and retirement age cannot be changed to the holder’s disadvantage after appointment. The holder is barred from any later office under the Government of India or a State government. The office’s expenses, salaries included, are charged on the Consolidated Fund of India. The 1971 Act sets the salary equal to that of a Supreme Court judge and the term at six years or until age 65, whichever comes first.

The Constituent Assembly adopted the draft on 30 May 1949. B. R. Ambedkar told it that the Auditor-General was “probably the most important officer in the Constitution of India”, because he was the one person who would see that spending did not exceed or vary from what Parliament laid down in the Appropriation Act. He said the post should be at least as independent as the judiciary, and he pointed out that, as drafted, the staff of the Auditor-General would be appointed by the executive. Article 148(5) as adopted lets the President make rules on the staff’s service conditions and the CAG’s administrative powers, but only after consulting the CAG. For the wider story of that debate, see Ambedkar and the writing of the Constitution.

The title also dates from that debate. A Drafting Committee member proposed changing Auditor-General to Comptroller and Auditor-General, arguing that the new name better reflected the office’s control over government expenditure.

What the Act lets the CAG audit

Article 149 hands the details to Parliament. It says the CAG exercises such powers and duties over the accounts of the Union, the States and any other authority or body as Parliament’s law prescribes, and that until Parliament acted, the office kept the powers the Auditor General held before the Constitution. The law is the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971, which the CAG’s own commentary dates to 15 December 1971. It was amended in 1976, 1984, 1987 and 1994.

Under the Act, section 13 requires the CAG to audit all spending from the Consolidated Fund of India and of each State and each Union Territory with a legislative assembly, along with the Contingency Funds and Public Accounts, which are the fund for urgent unforeseen spending and the account of money the government holds on others’ behalf. Section 16 covers receipts such as taxes, where the CAG must be satisfied that the rules for assessing and collecting revenue secure an effective check.

Section 14 reaches bodies that live on public money. The CAG audits any body or authority substantially financed by grants or loans from the Consolidated Fund, defined as a grant or loan of not less than Rs 25 lakh in a year that makes up at least 75 per cent of the body’s total expenditure. With the President’s or Governor’s prior approval, the CAG may audit a body receiving Rs 1 crore or more in a year. Section 20 lets it audit other bodies when the President or Governor asks, on agreed terms.

Government companies are audited under the Companies Act, 1956, as the Act’s section 19 provides, and the CAG’s report on them goes to the government, which must lay it before Parliament or the legislature under section 19A.

Article 279 makes the CAG certify the net proceeds of a tax, and the certificate is final. That certificate is the figure behind the divisible pool in the Finance Commission’s tax split.

How a finding becomes a report on Parliament’s table

The CAG’s reports fall into three kinds, and the office’s website sorts them that way: financial audit reports, compliance audit reports and performance audit reports. PRS Legislative Research’s 2008 primer explains the difference. Financial audit asks whether the accounts follow accepted standards. Compliance, or regularity, audit asks whether spending and revenue-raising followed the rules. Performance audit asks whether a scheme or institution met its aims efficiently and at the least possible cost.

The primer, which describes the process as it ran in 2008, says each observation goes to the ministry as a draft paragraph and the ministry must reply within a fixed time. Unresolved points go into an inspection report, and the most important are compiled into the audit report. The Commonwealth Games report shows the same sequence on a single audit: fieldwork between August and December 2010, entry and exit conferences with the agencies, and detailed Statements of Facts sent to them for comment.

Article 151 then takes over. The CAG’s reports on the Union accounts go to the President, who must have them laid before each House of Parliament. Reports on a State’s accounts go to the Governor, who has them laid before the State legislature. The Article sets no deadline for laying a report.

After tabling, the Public Accounts Committee takes up the reports, and for public enterprises the Committee on Public Undertakings does. Our piece on how Parliament’s sessions and committees work describes what the Committee does with a report. The primer records that ministries must file action-taken notes with that Committee or the Committee on Public Undertakings.

The 2G report of 2010 and what followed

Report No. 19 of 2010 was a performance audit of how the Department of Telecommunications issued licences and allocated 2G spectrum. The CAG’s page records that it was tabled on Tuesday 16 November 2010. It covered 2003-04 to 2009-10.

The report said the Department issued 122 licences in 2008 at an entry price found in 2001. It said the Finance Ministry had questioned that price in November 2007, that advice from the Ministry of Law and Justice and a suggestion from the Prime Minister were not followed, and that applications received up to 25 September 2007 were all issued letters of intent on one day, 10 January 2008. It said 85 of the 122 licences went to companies that, in the audit’s words, did not satisfy basic eligibility conditions.

On money, the report was careful about its own limits. It said any loss from valuing the spectrum could “only be ‘presumptive’”, because the price depends on scarcity, competition, business plans and the state of the sector, and that models rest on assumptions that “could be open to questions and be disputed”. It gave four estimates of the presumptive loss, from Rs 57,666 crore, based on an equity sale by one licensee, to Rs 1,76,645 crore, based on prices from the 3G auction.

The Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology was reported on 7 January 2011 as saying the Government rejected the larger estimate, and that it “had no basis and was utterly erroneous”. Three later decisions are matters of court record. On 2 February 2012 the Supreme Court, in Centre for Public Interest Litigation v Union of India, declared the grant of the licences and the allotment of spectrum illegal and quashed them, with effect after four months. On 21 December 2017 a special CBI court in Delhi acquitted all the accused in the criminal cases, and the judge was reported as saying the CBI “miserably failed to prove any charge against any of the accused”. The Delhi High Court granted the CBI leave to appeal on 22 March 2024 and listed the appeal for hearing in May 2024. We found no later reported outcome.

The three proceedings asked different questions. The audit reported what the files showed and gave a range for what the spectrum might have fetched. The Supreme Court ruled on whether the allotments met the law. The criminal court asked whether the prosecution had proved specific charges.

The Commonwealth Games audit of 2011

Report No. 6 of 2011, tabled on 5 August 2011, covered the XIX Commonwealth Games held in Delhi from 3 to 14 October 2010. The report opens by recording that the Games were “successfully hosted”, that they were the largest multi-sport event held in India, and that 4,336 athletes and 2,115 officials from 71 associations took part in 17 sports. India finished second in the medal table with 38 gold, 27 silver and 36 bronze, its best result at the Games.

The audit ran from the May 2003 bid to December 2010, building on a study of preparedness the CAG gave the Government in July 2009. It found the bid had estimated an all-inclusive cost of Rs 1,200 crore, while the budget estimate in October 2010 for the Government of India and the Delhi government, with the city’s municipal bodies and other agencies, was Rs 18,532 crore, excluding investments by other agencies such as the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the airport agencies. It said the window from November 2003 to mid-2006 for planning was wasted, and that the Organising Committee’s records were so inadequate that auditors could not derive assurance on their authenticity or completeness.

Audit of panchayats and municipalities

After the 73rd and 74th Amendments gave panchayats and municipalities more functions and funds, the preface to Goa’s 2012 report on its local bodies says, the Eleventh Finance Commission envisaged giving the CAG control and supervision over local body accounts and audit. The preface adds that the CAG audits Goa’s urban local bodies and village panchayats under section 14 of the Act, and that the State entrusted Technical Guidance and Supervision to the CAG in November 2006.

What happens after the report

What follows tabling is for the legislature. Section 18 of the 1971 Act gives the CAG powers to inspect any office of accounts under Union or State control, including treasuries, to require accounts and papers to be sent for inspection, and to put questions and call for information. The published report is the product of that access.

On 16 November 2025 the CAG’s Audit Diwas press release put the workforce at more than 40,000 officers and staff and described a portal linking nearly 10 lakh auditee entities with audit offices.