Lucknow civic projects to face CAG ground-level audit

All development works carried out by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) will come under a ground-level audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), with the exercise set to check whether projects shown as completed in official records match their actual status on the ground.

The urban mobility audit is scheduled to begin on September 30 and will cover all work carried out during the financial years 2023-24 to 2025-26. The principal accountant general (audit-I), Prayagraj, has written to the municipal commissioner asking the LMC to make arrangements for the audit, reported The Times of India.

The audit team will examine roads, including arterial and internal roads, along with road widening, reconstruction and maintenance works. It will also cover footpaths, pedestrian crossings, zebra crossings, foot-over bridges, subways, ramps and facilities for persons with disabilities.

Projects involving cycle tracks, cycle parking, green corridors, non-motorised transport, bus stops, bus shelters, e-rickshaw and tempo stands, multimodal transport and last-mile connectivity will also be reviewed.

The team will examine documents including detailed project reports, tenders, contracts, payment records and quality-control reports. It will also carry out joint physical verification of selected projects.

During the verification, officials will take geo-tagged photographs and check the condition and functioning of infrastructure at the sites. Roads, streetlights, traffic management systems and other civic facilities will be inspected to determine whether they are functioning as recorded in official documents.

The audit will also assess whether projects provide safe and accessible facilities to residents. Officials said the exercise would help identify gaps between the work shown in records and what exists on the ground and could also point to financial or procedural irregularities in development works.