604 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
- Consequently, in order to keep alive the ordinances, orders, bye-laws, rules and regulations made by the Governor-General, it is necessary to amplify the explanation so as to include these orders also.
*The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Sir, with regard to the amendment of my Friend Mr. Kunzru I am prepared to accept it provided he is prepared to drop the words “or any local”……†
Pandit Hirday Nath Kunzru : I have dropped them.
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Because local audit is a matter which is within the control of the Provincial Governments. But the addition of the words “other authority” I think may be necessary or even useful. As he has himself said, the policy of the Government of India today is to create a great many corporations to manage undertakings which it is not possible to manage departmentally and consequently it is necessary that the Government of India should make some provision for the audit of these corporations. That being so I think it is desirable to vest the Central Government with power to allow the Auditor-General to audit even the accounts of all such authorities. Subject to the modification I have suggested, I am prepared to accept the amendment.
With regard to the point made by my Friend Mr. Sidhva that many of these rules with regard to the duties of the Auditor-General are made by the executive, and, therefore, since by the amendment which I have suggested we are continuing to give these powers the same operation which they had before, we are practically investing the Executive with the authority to prescribe the duties of the Auditor-General. Obviously, there is an incongruity in this position, in that an officer who is supposed to control the Executive Government with regard to the administration of the finance should have his duties prescribed by rules laid by the Executive. Now the only reply that I can give to my honourable Friend, Mr. Sidhva, is this that these provisions have been taken bodily to a large extent from the provisions contained in section 151 of the present Government of India Act, 1935, which deal with the custody of public money, and section 166 which deals with the rules made by the Governor-General with regard to the duties of the Auditor-General.
*CAD, Vol. VIII, 30th May 1949, pp. 414-15.
†Dots indicate interruption.