The Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IA & AS), a formalized civil service (Group A) of the Union of India, forms the middle and top level management of the organization, through which the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) exercises its mandate. The lower level comprises of Officers of Group B and below. The three levels together form the Indian Audit & Accounts Department (IA & AD).
The Constitution of India defines the basic structure of the institution of the CAG of India – that the CAG of India is an independent constitutional authority who is neither part of the legislature nor executive. The CAG is the audit authority for the States and the Union of India and the accounting authority for the States. This mandate of CAG of India passes onto the IA & AS which performs the compilation of accounts for states, and audit for both, the states and the centre.
On the accounting part, the Accountant General Offices (AG Office) present in states, do the compilation of the State Accounts. These offices also take care of the Entitlement function, such as Pension and Provident Fund, for the state government employees, and in some states, Gazetted Entitlement for the All India Service officers belonging to particular state. These offices are hence called as Offices of AG (Accounts & Entitlements). In some states, the entitlement functions have been assigned to the State Governments.
On the Audit front, there are two separate machineries. Office of the AG (Audit) is in charge of auditing the activities of the State Government, while the Office of Principal Director (Audit) takes care of auditing the activities of the Central Government. Each state has an Office of the AG (Audit), while the Office of PD (Audit) is located region wise, which may contain more than one state. Depending on the officers holding the charge, the offices are also known as the offices of Principal Accountant General or the Director General as the case may be.
Apart from this national presence, IA & AD also has international presence via three international audit offices at Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC. CAG of India has also been entrusted with audit of international bodies such as the United Nations etc.
The career of an IA & AS Officer witnesses timely and versatile promotional avenues. An IA & AS officer joins the department as Deputy AG (DAG), and in due course gets promoted as Senior DAG (Sr. DAG), AG, Principal AG (PAG), Additional Deputy CAG (ADAI) and Deputy CAG (DAI). As explained above, the posts equivalent to AG and PAG are Principal Director (PD) and Director General (DG), in central machinery.
