Patna: Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary on Thursday said that Kerala has now understood Bihar's flood pain.
"This is the first time Kerala has understood how devastating floods can be and how much Bihar, with 73 per cent of its area as flood-prone, could have suffered from floods. Previously the people of Kerala used to think that Bihar raised the bogey of floods every year to get financial assistance (from the Centre) and its people were habituated to eating flood relief materials," Choudhary said.
He was speaking after inaugurating a seminar on "accountability in the changing era of governance" organised here by the Institute of Public Auditors of India (IPAI), a registered society under the patronage of the comptroller and auditor general of India.
Principal accountant general Nilotpal Goswami, Nalanda Open University vice-chancellor and "Dolphin Man" R.K. Sinha, and GSTN (goods and services tax network) chief executive officer Prakash Kumar also spoke on the occasion.
Senior bureaucrats including home department principal secretary Amir Subhani, finance department principal secretary Sujata Chaturvedi and labour resources department principal secretary Dipak Kumar Singh also attended the seminar.
Choudhary said that transparency and accountability went together, were complementary to each other, and a symbol of good governance.
The Bihar government was not lagging in accountability and was continuously progressing in the human development index (HDI), he said.
"The Bihar government has made several important laws, which are first in the country, to make it accountable to the people. For example the Bihar right to public service provides various types of services to the people within a stipulated time, and has increased transparency in the state," he added.
At the event, auditors raised issues related to the audit of government schemes and said that their social aspects should also be taken into account.
Retired deputy accountant general A.K. Singh said: "The government should not only pay attention to the audit of money and expenditure. It should also focus on various social and qualitative aspects. We can learn lessons from the Muzaffarpur shelter home case and the collapse of newly constructed bridges in Calcutta."
He added: "We must ensure that the delivery of social welfare and development schemes happens and the targeted population benefits."
