Introduction and brief history of the office
Office of the Principal Director of Audit, Indian Accounts Washington DC is housed in Chancery II building of the Embassy of India located at 2536 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington DC, 20008 USA.
Before Independence
Till the 1930s, India’s expenditure in USA which arose initially in India or the UK was negligible and payments, if any, to be made in USA was arranged through Bank remittances. Accounting and audit were carried out either in India or the UK. During and after the Second World War, there was huge increase in India’s foreign expenditure due to procurement of food grains and the capital goods from America and emergence of new diplomatic missions in the North and South America after India became independent. There were long delays in the accounting and audit of the enormous transactions in the United States as no local audit was conducted. The Audit Officers in India were not able to conduct Central Audit on the expenditure as they did not receive documents like purchase files, contract documents etc. and audit was confined merely to seeing that the stores shipped from USA were duly received and accounted for in the consignee’s ledgers. Lack of knowledge of local conditions involved lot of unnecessary correspondence between the audit offices in India and the Government of India Offices in the USA.
After Independence
In July 1950, the then CAG Shri V. Narahari Rao conducted a feasibility study, of opening an Audit Office in Washington DC for effective audit of Government expenditure in USA. Based on the report, CAG approved the setting up of an Audit Office headed by a senior IAAS Officer designated as Audit Officer Indian Accounts, Washington DC with effect from August 1951. The office was entrusted with audit of the accounts of Indian Embassy in Washington DC, including its attached offices, such as the Indian Information Services, Military Attaché , Air Attaché, the India Supply Mission etc and also local audit of the office in the two Americas. Shri G. Mathias was the first to hold the post of Audit Officer, Indian Accounts, Washington DC. He was assisted by one Assistant Audit Officer, four SAS Accountants, one Clerk, one Typist, one Secretary and one Messenger. The Audit Officer was re-designated as Director of Audit with effect from January 1962. The Office was further upgraded to office of Principal Director with effect from February 2002.
