"Accountability cannot end with a CAG report sitting on a shelf." In this light, examine the challenges in follow-up on audit findings at Union and State levels.

Under Article 151, CAG reports are laid before Parliament and State legislatures, where Public Accounts Committees (PACs) examine them. In November 2026, PAC chairs of Parliament and 25 States met in Thiruvananthapuram. They warned that an audit loses its value when findings arrive late and nobody acts on them [1].

Challenges at the tabling stage

• Executive controls timing: the government being audited advises the President or Governor on when its own report is laid. The Union PAC Chairman said he was "alarmed" that a few governments were delaying this [1].
• No fixed deadline: this is why the meet asked for a "robust, time-bound mechanism" [1].

Challenges at the scrutiny stage

• Time lag: reports arrive years after the money is spent, when "officers have moved on and the trail has become untraceable" [1].
• Limited capacity: the PAC has at most 22 part-time members [2][3], while the scope of audit keeps widening [4]. As a result, only a few audit paras get a detailed hearing.
• Loss of continuity: the PAC is reconstituted every year [3], so a case can pass through several committees and lose momentum.

Challenges at the action stage

• Action Taken Note (ATN) backlog: PAC reports of the 16th Lok Sabha dealt with ministries that had not sent ATNs [5].
• Advisory nature: PAC recommendations are not binding [2]. Ignoring them brings criticism, not penalty.
• A recurring problem: the CAG gives a full chapter to "Follow up of Audit Observations" [6].
• Uneven States: delays in tabling were singled out at the State level [1], so accountability varies from State to State.

Way forward

• Tabling deadlines in the Rules of Procedure: the PAC itself rests on Rule 308, not on any Article [3], so each House can add a deadline without amending the Constitution.
• Public, ministry-wise lists of pending ATNs, so that each Secretary answers for their own backlog.
• Forensic and data tools to pick audit paras for hearings, as the resolution urged [1] and the Speaker has advocated [7].

Follow-up fails at three links: tabling, scrutiny and action. Each needs its own fix. Firm tabling deadlines, published ATN backlogs and data-driven selection can make the PAC a real check rather than a ritual. This would give effect to the constitutional principle of executive responsibility to the legislature, and audit would continue "until the last rupee is accounted for" [1].