New Delhi: Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday slammed Centre for transferring three officers of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), saying it operates ‘mafia-style’ under a cloak of silence and intimidation.
In a post on X, Ramesh said, “If anyone exposes Modi government’s modus operandi of corruption, they are threatened or removed. The latest victims are three officers of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), who exposed massive scams in government schemes in a report tabled during the Monsoon Session of Parliament.”
“Now, the three CAG officers in charge of reporting on the Ayushman Bharat and Dwarka Expressway scams have been transferred to hide the blatant corruption in the Government, despite the fact that the CAG is supposed to be an independent body,” said Ramesh, who is also a Rajya Sabha MP.
“We demand that these transfer orders should be cancelled immediately, the officers return to the CAG,” he said, and also called for a strict probe into in the mega scams.
The Congress leader said that CAG the report documented 1,400 percent cost inflation and tendering irregularities in the Dwarka Expressway, in addition to a diversion of Rs 3,600 crore from highways projects, faulty bidding practices, and 60 percent cost inflation of Bharatmala scheme.
“Not only that, an audit of the Ayushman Bharat scheme showed lakhs of claims made to dead patients and at least 7.5 lakh beneficiaries linked to a single mobile number,” he said.
He also attached a news report highlighting the transfer of officers of the CAG, including three who were coincidentally involved with and in charge of two of the 12 key audit reports that were presented in Parliament during the monsoon session.
With inputs from IANS