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The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has reported recoveries of ₹4,251.34 crore following its audits in 2025-26, but several cases highlighted in its latest report show that the amounts recovered fell well short of those flagged by auditors.
The report, titled CAG: Adding Value to Public Governance 2025-26, was presented to the President last week. It covers cases from April 2023 to March 2026, drawn from the CAG’s field offices, and notes that “priority has been given to cases demonstrating clear corrective action”. It doesn’t give the overall figure showing the extent of under-recovery. In some of the largest cases, the reported outcomes involve changes in rules or systems rather than financial recoveries.
In Odisha, an audit found the undervaluation of iron ore grades, with a revenue implication of ₹10,294.24 crore. It recommended an investigation covering all auctioned mines. The outcome cited in the report is the notification of new mineral rules in 2025 providing for AI-enabled surveillance and GPS tracking. However, the report notes that these measures are “subject to effective implementation and enforcement”.
Under Odisha’s KALIA scheme for farmers, ₹782.26 crore was disbursed to 1.27 million ineligible beneficiaries, while another ₹107.64 crore went to 128,000 beneficiaries with incorrect bank account details. The outcome listed is the integration of the scheme’s data with PM-KISAN, Aadhaar and other databases.
Where the report provides recovery figures, the amounts are often substantially lower than the sums flagged during audits.
For instance, ₹2.9 trillion in cess collected on crude oil up to 2023-24 had not been transferred because a designated fund had not been created. In response, the Union government established the Oil Industry Development Fund in 2024-25 and transferred ₹17,730 crore to it, equivalent to about 6 per cent of the amount cited.
Across Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs), audit observations had a financial implication of ₹14,777.92 crore. Of this, ₹559.56 crore related to non-compliance with rules and contractual terms. Seven CPSEs recovered ₹205.49 crore between March 2023 and March 2024.
Other cases also show partial recoveries. At Madhya Pradesh’s Shree Singaji thermal power project, liquidated damages of ₹413.25 crore had not been levied. Subsequently, ₹103.64 crore, or about a quarter of the amount, was recovered from the contractor.
In Maharashtra, ₹92.50 lakh of ₹3.84 crore in duplicate ex-gratia payments made during the Covid-19 pandemic had been recovered by December 2024, amounting to about 24 per cent of the total.
Some cases, however, recorded more substantial recoveries. The Telangana government recovered the entire ₹65.45 crore overpaid to contractors on the Kaleshwaram project. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) recovered ₹42.71 crore of the ₹47.69 crore short-billed to a private telecom company, or nearly 90 per cent.
The largest single recovery cited in the report was ₹3,389 crore, arising from income-tax reassessments of banks and non-banking financial companies.
The CAG acknowledged that “time lags between audit findings and observable outcomes are common due to administrative processes, approvals, litigation, or operational constraints”.
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