Taking a close look at the Indian Railways, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India is set to undertake four audits of the transport behemoth including one on its multi-modal transport and logistics initiatives. It will also be undertaking audits on sustainable rail transport, a performance audit of suburban train services as well as an IT audit of the Indian Railways e-Procurement System.
The audit reports are likely to be presented in the Monsoon and Winter Sessions of Parliament in 2026, a top CAG official said on Thursday.
“The Railways is working on a blueprint to become future-ready and increase its modal share in freight transport to 45% by 2030 from about 26% now. But how will it happen? Where will it get the cargo and does it justify the investments,” Noted Pravir Pandey, ADAI (Railways), adding that the audit of the multi-modal transport and logistics initiatives will look into various aspects across transport sectors.
An official release noted that the CAG, being the auditor of all Ministries and Departments of the Government of India, is uniquely positioned to undertake a comprehensive, cross-sectoral audit covering multiple entities involved in the logistics ecosystem. “Accordingly, an Integrated Audit Group (IAG) has been constituted to carry out coordinated audit work across various audit verticals, including railways, infrastructure, ports, shipping, and waterways.”
The Railway Audit Wing is conducting the audit with particular emphasis on ‘First Mile Last Mile’ connectivity with Logistics hubs and (Origin -Destination) O-D pairs in financial year 2025-26.
The audit on will focus on the National Rail Plan 2021–2030, the regulatory and legal framework, logistics operations, digitisation, and the ease of doing business in logistics keeping in mind the International Best Practices in Multimodal Logistics. “The audit carried out by the Railway Audit Wing of the CAG office will cover nine Railway Zones across the north–south and east–west corridors of India, along with three Ministries, Logistics related Railway PSUs and selected Origin–Destination (O–D) pairs critical to freight movement,” said the release. The eastern and western dedicated freight corridors and the golden quadrilateral will also be studied as part of the audit.
The audit report is planned to be placed before the Parliament in the Monsoon Session of 2026.
Creation of two centralised cadres:
Meanwhile, the CAG on Thursday also announced the creation of two new centralized cadres that would help build deeper professional expertise and further improve the quality of audit of central government finances.
It has accorded in-principle approval for the creation of specialised cadres — Central Revenue Audit (CRA) Cadre and Central Expenditure Audit (CEA) Cadre — within the Indian Audit and Accounts Department, said KS Subramanian, DAI (HR, IR, Coordination and Legal) on Thursday.
The scheme will be operationalised from January 1, 2026 and two separate SAS examination streams will be introduced, one each for CRA and CEA, said an official statement. “The existing Finance and Communication Audit stream will be merged into the CEA stream,” it further said.
The new cadres will consolidate over 4,000 audit professionals at the Senior Audit Officer and Assistant Audit Officer levels.
At present, audit of Central receipts and expenditure is undertaken by nine DGA and PDA (Central) offices (with branch offices) and exclusive offices such as DGA (CE), PDA (I&CA), DGACE (E&SD) and DGA (F&C), with cadre control dispersed across multiple State Civil Audit offices and independent CCAs. The decentralized cadre control of CRA and CEA has led to fragmentation, with cadres distributed across 16 and 19 Cadre Controlling Authorities, respectively.
This centralisation is expected to help unify cadre management under DG/PD (Central Cadres), consolidating multiple fragmented cadres into two specialised streams.
