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Patil must Go We have had enough of the Union Home Minister — a proven misfit for the job — using the same dull rhetoric to address the countrymen after every major terror attack. Last Saturday, as reaction to the serial blasts that rocked the national capital, he said that the attack was aimed at undoing ‘social harmony’ and the people ought not to let that happen. He also said that he was ‘sorry’ for the tragedy. Who is addressing whom? The Home Minister to the citizens of the country? That is right; only, it is the weakest Home Minister the country has ever had, trying to impress upon the countrymen his worth after endangering their lives by exposing them to a free reign of terror by making a mockery — knowingly or unknowingly, we do not know — of his own ministry, so crucial to the country’s internal security. Patil does not know his job, or he is incapable of introducing himself to the responsibilities of the job of a Union Home Minister, or he is simply unconcerned because he knows he is safe in his job, given Sonia Gandhi’s blessings. In fact when the Union Home Minister, in his characteristic self, says ‘sorry’ to the people of the country at a time when terrorists have succeeded in attacking four major cities of the country in a span of four months with an alacrity that is rather expected of the government in decimating the murderers, and of course at a time when the government of the day has remained a mute spectator to death and destruction and seems to be rather telling the people to fend for themselves because it would not do anything to secure their lives, it is sheer violence on their aspirations; people elect their representatives to preside over their destiny, not for the leaders to make a hell out of innocent lives. By now it is crystal clear that the UPA government has chosen the vote-garnering expedient of inaction. It has gone overboard to punctuate whatever little counter-terrorism framework it has had by the dots of a perverse secular pretence. Shivraj Patil should now sit up and heed what the people are strongly opposing: his continuation as Union Home Minister. It is time he humbly acknowledged his failures and made a graceful exit so that someone more competent and given naturally to the challenging task, if any, could replace him and give relief to the people. The Patil problem is two-fold: 1) he, as proven amply, does not — or does not want to — know how to streamline his own ministry and the different agencies associated with it and responsible for evolving a meaningful internal security dialogue, and 2) he suffers from an acute poverty of response to the challenges facing the nation in the wake of terrorists succeeding in giving the impression that it is they who are the winners, not the government, because the government itself has let them be winners! In the circumstance, then, Patil ceases to have the right to continue as Home Minister — and if he still goes on ‘guiding’ the Home Ministry, he will only be insulting the chair of the country’s Home Minister. In fact, when it comes to internal security, the UPA government itself has long lost the right to continue. But that is no worry because general elections are due. Even so, Patil must go because the country must immediately be secured by a Home Ministry whose head knows what the business of Home is like.

Read the Pattern Whether it is Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad or Delhi — the four cities attacked by terrorists over the past four months — the pattern is the same: targeting of unsuspecting people in crowded areas by exploiting their vulnerability to cause maximum damage. This is criminal terrorism, which in India the Indian Mujahideen (IM), a splinter group of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), has come to represent and assert by its savagery in the name of jehad. There is also a deliberate ploy, criminal again, to provoke Muslim hate against ‘Hindu India’; IM’s e-mail sent to the media immediately after the Delhi blasts talks of ‘‘the home-grown jihadi militia of Islam’’ that has vowed to ‘‘make you face the disastrous consequences of injustice and oppression inflicted upon the Muslims all over the country’’. It also ridicules the country’s investigating agencies and cyber experts for whom IM’s ‘‘third consecutive e-mail is still a mystery’’ — IM says ‘‘it is very sad to see the bad condition of your cyber forensics who have still failed to find out our technique of sending the message of death’’. It is clear that IM is operating with a fair degree of sophistication and that it has the scope to do that. This must prompt the police and intelligence agencies into refining their strategy to nab the criminals and eliminate their modules. The trend, both pre- and post-terror, must be read as it is. It must then be backed by a political will to act. And no ‘secularism’ please. The war on terror is fought differently. It is a war, and must remain so.

ECONOMIC OBSERVER Audit: A Panoramic View Dr BK Mukhopadhyay Audit is a tool used to monitor a company’s financial performance in comparison to a set of standards, which are typically imposed by government regulators or by professional standard groups — an independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit-oriented or not, and regardless of its size or legal form, when such an examination is conducted with a view to expressing an opinion thereon. Audit programmes are lists of audit procedures to be performed by audit staff in order to obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence. Planning for the audit involves developing an overall strategy for the expected conduct and scope of the audit. Depending upon various purposes, there are various kinds of audit. A thorough knowledge of requirements and modalities is essential before taking up any such assignment. The Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India has defined cost audit as ‘‘an audit of efficiency of minute details of expenditure while the work is in progress, and not a post-mortem examination. Unlike financial audit which is fait accompli, cost audit is mainly a preventive measure, a guide for management policy and decision in addition to being a barometer of performance”. Continuous audit refers to an audit which is conducted continuously the whole year around or at fixed intervals, say monthly, quarterly, fortnightly or weekly, or otherwise during the current financial period as per the requirement of the management and quantum of work. Financial audit is done to express an opinion on the accuracy of the data contained in financial statements. Internal audit is an independent appraisal function, established within an organization to examine and evaluate its activities as a service to the organization. It is a managerial control system which functions by measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of other controls; whereas interim audit may be defined as an audit conducted between two annual audits. It lies between final audit and continuous audit. Again, compliance audit involves obtaining and evaluating evidence to determine whether or not certain financial activities of an entity conform to specified conditions, rules or regulations. Management audit is a systematic comprehensive critical appraisal of an organization, its structure, management practices and methods, conducted normally by external, independent persons. Its primary objective is to motivate the management to take action that will lead to increased efficiency and profitability of the organization. By overview audit we mean whether a project is in trouble or not. The project is continued only if the report of the overview audit is positive. Project audit is a formal and systematic verification of the performance of an ongoing project. Normally, it is carried out along with the work. Technical audit is concerned with the specific technical issues and problems of a project. The auditor examines all the technical aspects of the project. Information systems audit (ISA) — of recent origin keeping in pace and responding to the need of this age — involves a technical review of a computing function and includes data centre operations, access security, major application systems, end user computing etc. The environment exists when a computer of any kind is involved in the processing of financial information of significance to the audit, regardless of whether that computer is operated by the entity concerned or a third party. Operational audit refers to the technique for regularly and systematically appraising unit or function effectiveness against corporate and industry standards by utilizing personnel who are not specialists in the area of study with the objective of assuring a given management that its aims are being carried out and to identify conditions that can be improved. Final audit is also known as periodical audit. It may be taken to mean an audit which is undertaken at the end of the financial year. Implementation of appropriate quality control policies and procedures by an audit firm is to ensure that all audits are carried out in accordance with the statements on standard auditing practices. Peer review is also undertaken — a periodic, outside review of a firm’s system of quality control over its auditing and accounting practice. Compliance procedures are tests designed to obtain reasonable assurance that internal controls on which audit reliance is to be placed are fully in place. Tests of controls are audit procedures to determine the effectiveness of the design and operation of the client’s internal control policies and procedures. The operations thus depend on the particular type of audit that is carried out. When auditing around the computer, the auditor examines inputs of the computer but does not use the computer to test controls or to extract and analyse data for substantive testing, whereas auditing through the computer is where the audit verifies the processing of transaction by the computer using Computer Assisted Audit Techniques (CAATs). Audit is not free from risk. Audit risk is the risk that the auditor will conclude — that the financial statements are fairly stated and an unqualified opinion can, therefore, be issued when they are materially misstated. This consists of inherent risk (when material misstatement occurs in financial statements), control risk ( when the internal control structure fails to detect/correct misstatement), and detection risk (when the auditor fails to detect misstatement). Let it be also said here that non-sampling risk or error occurs when audit tests do not uncover existing exceptions in the sample. Therefore, fraud detection is vital — because it is matter of intentional misrepresentation of financial information. (The writer is a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Bank Management, Guwahati) source: sentinel assam

Should Kashmir Election be Held on Time? F. Ahmed As the Election Commission readies to hold the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections ‘‘on time’’, the question whether or not such a gamble is worth taking brooks a logical answer. It is the duty of the poll body to organize elections in time and ensure that a government elected through free and fair elections takes office sooner rather than later. It is also the duty of the Commission not to hold elections if the State cannot be sent into election mode because of valid constitutional reasons. After all, the provisions of Governor’s rule and President’s rule (the State has its own constitution in addition to the Indian constitution and both are applicable here concomitantly) were conceived by the founding fathers of these constitutions because these are democratic provisions meant to ward off critical periods in the political history of the State. Thus, nobody needs to shy away from the fact that Governor’s rule or President’s rule are part of Indian democracy and we need not sound apologetic if the same needs to be continued for a little longer to ensure elections are participative, credible and fair. For the last three months, the state has undergone perhaps the most tumultuous period since its accession to India in 1947. Known for communal harmony, the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and the Hindu-majority Jammu region have never before been as communally polarized as now. The movement in the valley for the revocation of the order for forest land allotment to a board managing, the Hindu Amarnath shrine, the counter protest against the revocation order in the Jammu region, the perceived blockade of the Jammu-Srinagar highway and its fallout on the already bruised psyche of the Kashmiri Muslims have together created a situation where the emotional distance between Srinagar and Jammu as well as between Srinagar and New Delhi have increased manifold. Separatist leaders who are in the business of opposing elections because they would otherwise cease to be ‘separatist leaders’ are now running the valley de facto. The administration has been playing second fiddle to the separatist agenda by adjusting its work calendar to suit the calendar of shutdowns and marches. Therefore, it is not because the separatists oppose elections that we must seriously re-think over holding them ‘‘on time’’. Tens of thousands joined separatist marches not because they were called upon to do so by the separatists but because the people forced the leaders of the separatist cause to lead them. More than 60 people, including senior separatist leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz, have died here during the present secessionist campaign. Nearly 1,000 people, including security personnel, have been injured in clashes. Those favouring ‘‘timely elections’’ in the State argue that democracy means giving expression to the will of those who take part in the poll process and even a 2-5 percent poll percentage would be better than no elections. Another reason cited in favour of ‘‘timely elections’’ is that Islamabad is wrapped in internal turmoil, which means we must rush the elections in Kashmir before Pakistan finds stability to pump in more armed guerrillas. Nothing could be more faltered than this belief. It is fundamentally Pakistan’s strategic and political instability that gave rise to its proactive role in the Kashmir dispute. A stable Pakistan should mean peace not only in our neighbourhood but also in Kashmir because Islamabad’s own stakes in peace would multiply manifold due to internal stability. A possible five percent voter turnout is not the issue; the greater risk is that the elections could make the electioneering process look like a farce. The second crucial question: if the elections are deferred, how would that help democracy in the State? After all, elections would have to be held latest by next spring. How much would have changed by then? Yet, there could be a remarkable difference between now and then. Both India and Pakistan are likely to open the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road for trade between the divided parts of Jammu and Kashmir by the beginning or the middle of the next month. That is definitely going to act as a balm on the wounds of the locals. The blockade or the perceived blockade is not in force now. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has promised good news on Jammu and Kashmir by the beginning of the next year. India-Pakistan relations are likely to improve in the days to come. More important than anything else, the two countries would in all probability start the confidence building process which would now more closely focus on Kashmir. Even if we have a voter turnout of 25 per cent or more by the beginning of the next year, it would be far better and practical than the poll scenario if elections are held ‘‘on time’’. In fact, holding elections ‘‘on time’’ could be quite different from holding them at the right time. If the man running the affairs of the state is for ‘‘timely elections’’ because he wants to wriggle out of the mess and hand over the mantle to somebody, the central government should seriously think of replacing him with someone who can steer the place out of the present mess — before Jammu and Kashmir can be put into an election mode. (The writer is a journalist based in Srinagar) (IANS)

Loktak Success: A Timely Drive Adni The fishing activities in the Loktak lake, the largest fresh water lake in Northeast India, came to a grinding halt on the September 9, 2008 following a massive combing operation in militant hideouts by a combined force of the Army and Manipur Police. For the first time in the history of counter-insurgency operation in Manipur, this operation proved most effective in terms of elimination without collateral damage on civilian and casualties to the security forces. Six militants belonging to the much dreaded Cobra Task Force of the Peoples’ Revolutionary Party of Kengleipak (PREPAK) were killed and three hideouts, used for launching attacks on establishment, were burnt down by the security forces during the night-long operation. The hitherto inaccessible Loktak lake, which lies at the middle of the Manipur valley, has long since been a breeding ground of militants of various banned outfits operating in Manipur. It lies in the tri-junction of Bishnupur, Thoubal and Imphal West districts. Thus, Loktak lake has been a launching pad of almost all militant attacks and the security forces had for quite some time planning for an operation in the lake to flush out the militants. In a surgically executed raid on the western part of the lake on the night of September 8 and 9, the Army and Manipur Police broke the very backbone of the PREPAK Cobra Task Force, which was behind the recent bomb attack at the Chief Minister’s residence. The vast area of the Loktak lake right from Toubul in the north down to Ningthoukhong Kha Khunou in the south in Bishnupur district was cordoned off by the Army and Manipur Police from the evening of September 8 so that no militant could escape and also no fishermen would venture in the lake. When the area was completely cordoned off the operation began from 5 pm under darkness. During the 12-hour long non-stop operation braving rain and other hazards, security forces recovered nine sophisticated weapons including rocket launcher, mortar, universal machine gun, lethode bombs and a number of assault rifles along with huge quantity of assorted ammunition and war-grade stores. The operation, first of its kind in the Loktak lake, was supervised and coordinated Major General TS Handa, GOC of 57 Mountain Division. Vital inputs on the hideouts were voluntarily provided by the general public who are fed up with extortion and misbehavior of militants. Local villagers in the Loktak periphery are visibly upset with the militants due to their firing on the security forces amidst village houses, endangering commoners. Police and Army attribute success of this difficult operation to the close cooperation between the State Police and the Army with a massive support of the local population. Informed sources revealed that very sophisticated technology and techniques were used by the Army to execute the operation. Just after the Loktak operation, both the Director General of Manipur Police Y Joykumar Singh Major General TS Handa, in a joint press conference at Imphal, admitted that the success of the operation was due to complete understanding and coordination between the Army and State Police.

source: sentinel assam