The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) today said it is likely to complete by February next year a special audit of expenses incurred by Reliance Industries (RIL) on the nation's largest gas field.
The Oil Ministry has asked CAG to audit the expenses after it was alleged that RIL had gold-plated (or artificially inflated) gas field cost that that had increased fourfold to $8.8 billion.
"That (audit) will take time... We have started the audit (and) it will take at least 6-8-months," Comptroller and Auditor General, Vinod Rai, told reporters here.
He was responding to a query as to when he expected the special audit to be completed.
Replying to another query on the special audit of telecom companies for alleged revenue leakage, Rai said that the CAG report was likely to be tabled in Parliament during Winter Session.
"Hopefully, we will be able to table the report in the Winter Session," Rai said.
RIL, which had in August last year agreed to CAG audit, had provided full access to records pertaining to expenses incurred on developing Dhirubhai-1 and 3 fields in the KG-D6 block off the Andhra coast to the nation's premier auditors.
CAG began audit on December 21 and its scope of audit of PSC in respect of the block KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) awarded to RIL, is for two financial years - 2006-07 and 2007-08, with access to records of previous years linked to transactions of these years.
While the ministry wanted special audit of accounts from 2003-04 fiscal, CAG wanted the scope of examination of records be restricted to 2006-07 and 2007-08 only.
