Vinod Rai is a former IAS officer who served as the 11th Comptroller and Auditor General of India. He assumed office on 7 January 2008 till 22 May 2013. He is the current chairman of UN Panel of External Auditors and Honorary Advisor to the Railways and a member of the Railway Kaya Kalp Council.
Vinod Rai (born 23 May in parsa, 1948) is a former IAS officer who served as the 11th Comptroller and Auditor General of India. He assumed office on 7 January 2008 till 22 May 2013. He is the current chairman of UN Panel of External Auditors and Honorary Advisor to the Railways and a member of the Railway Kaya Kalp Council. He holds a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Delhi, and Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University. He is widely considered as symbol of the anti-corruption movement and is credited with having turned the office of CAG into a powerful force for accountability and transparency in contemporary India. The most prominent actions of CAG under Vinod Rai was the report that stated that the 2G spectrum allocation by the government had caused a loss of over 1 lac crores to the government. Several ministers of the UPA had to resign, some were arrested. It is widely believed that this report by CAG was the single most important setback for the then UPA government. After years of hearing at the CBI court in Delhi, the judge acquitted all the accused saying not a single piece of admissible evidence had been put before the court. Vinod Rai was made the chairman of the Banking Board of India by the new Government of NDA by then. On 30 January 2017, the Supreme Court of India appointed Rai as the interim president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). He is the head of advisory commission of Kerala Infrastructure and Investment Board (KIIFB), appointed by Government of Kerala.
He was born in a Bhumihar family at Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh. He did his schooling from Birla Public School in Pilani, Rajasthan. He graduated from Hindu College, University of Delhi. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi and MPA from Harvard University, USA in 1988. He chose to study Financial Administration at Harvard Kennedy school in 1987 while he held the position of District Collector and Magistrate in the state of Kerala, India.
Rai is a 1972 batch Kerala cadre officer of Indian Administrative Service (IAS). He started his career as the sub-collector of Thrissur District. He spent his eight years of career in Thrissur City. He was the MD of Kerala State Co-operative Marketing Federation from 1977 to 1980. Later he was appointed as Principal Secretary (Finance) in the State Government of Kerala. He had served senior positions in the Ministries of Commerce and Defence, Government of India. Prior to his appointment as CAG, he served as Secretary, Financial Services and Additional Secretary in the Banking Division including banks and insurance companies under Ministry of Finance.
He is the chairman of United Nations Panel of External Auditors and member of the Governing Board of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has appreciated the panel and the yeoman service rendered by the external auditors in improving governance in the United Nations system. The panel headed by Vinod Rai discussed the major business transformations currently under way in the United Nations with Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon.
Mr Rai proposes to utilise his four decades of experience in the Indian Civil Services for developing an effective and transparent governance setup. Emerging economies and particularly those of the South Asia region have to recognise that economic development can be made sustainable in the long run only if it is nurtured and supported by a very efficient and transparent governance model. Such governance structures have to be architecture on an edifice where Accountability institutions are allowed total independence and administration is responsive to the needs of the citizen.