Comptroller and Auditor-General

Explanation

Statement 1 is incorrect. Under Articles 148–151, the C&AG's audit reports on State entities — including State PSUs and State-owned DISCOMs — are submitted to the Governor of the respective State, who then causes them to be laid before the State Legislature, not before Parliament. Parliament receives C&AG reports relating to the accounts of the Union. The fact that a State entity receives Union grants does not change the constitutional routing of audit reports; the accounts remain State accounts tabled in State legislatures. Statement 2 is correct. Performance audit (also called value-for-money audit) examines whether public programmes or entities have achieved their objectives economically, efficiently, and effectively. A 'horizontal performance audit' applies this lens across multiple entities of the same category — here, State-owned DISCOMs — to generate comparable findings on operational and financial performance. This is conceptually distinct from compliance (regularity) audit, which checks whether expenditure was incurred in accordance with applicable rules and sanctions. Statement 3 is correct. The C&AG operates as the supreme audit institution and its reports are advisory/recommendatory in nature — they do not carry the force of executive orders or court decrees. Nevertheless, the C&AG can and does consolidate cross-cutting systemic issues identified through multiple State-level audits and communicate them to the Union executive (such as the Ministry of Power) for policy consideration. This is consistent with the C&AG's constitutional role of providing an independent audit perspective to the legislature and, through the executive, to inform policy reform — without itself directing the executive.