Preempting a storm

At the release of a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India report, Implementation of Public Private Partnership Projects in NHAI, last week, the federal auditor highlighted many issues that had not only delayed project execution but also resulted in an additional burden on road users. The "financial implication" of the delay was well over Rs 35,000 crore, CAG officials said, refusing to term it a "loss" to the government/public exchequer. One would recall another CAG report, tabled in Parliament in 2010, had pegged the revenue loss to the exchequer on account of the allocation of 2G telecom spectrum in 2008 at a whopping Rs 1.76 lakh crore, raising a political storm that led to the removal of then telecommunications minister A Raja and the setting up of a joint parliamentary committee to probe the issue.