Why CAG Missed All-India Audit of Construction Workers’ Welfare
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Of the ₹1.12 lakh crore collected nationwide by March 2024, only about 57–60% has been used, leaving millions of laborers without promised benefits.
By P SESH KUMAR
NEW DELHI, September 15, 2025 — The Building and Other Construction Workers’ (BOCW) Welfare framework, a central legislation of 1996, was meant to safeguard millions of India’s most vulnerable labourers through a dedicated cess and a network of state welfare boards. Nearly three decades later, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has exposed damning failures in Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Goa and Maharashtra.
Each report narrates the same story of vast cess collections and abysmal welfare delivery. Yet, what is missing is a composite, all-India performance audit that could have revealed the systemic collapse of accountability—both at the state and the central level.
By choosing to restrict its scrutiny to scattered state audits, the CAG allowed the Centre’s weak monitoring role and the Ministry of Labour’s abdication of responsibility to slip under the radar, even after the Supreme Court itself called the situation a “national shame” in 2018.
The Scattered Picture
Take Gujarat: ₹4,700 crore collected over sixteen years, but only ₹808 crore—barely 17 per cent—spent on workers’ welfare. Delhi sat on a mountain of ₹3,579 crore, yet in normal years managed to spend only around 10 per cent of it. Goa, between 2017 and 2022, collected nearly ₹200 crore but spent a laughable ₹10.68 crore; in 2022–23, of ₹84.6 crore collected, only ₹3.76 lakh reached any worker.
Uttar Pradesh allowed cess money to leak while ineligible claimants thrived. Karnataka handed identity cards to non-construction workers. Tamil Nadu failed to even register thousands of migrant workers, the very backbone of its construction industry.
Kerala and Chhattisgarh were no better, their audits revealing the same lethargy and under-utilisation. Maharashtra, at one stage, delayed constituting the welfare board itself, leaving workers without even a theoretical chance at benefits.
The numbers add up to an appalling national arithmetic. As of March 2024, Parliament was told that cess collected across India stood at ₹1.12 lakh crore, but only ₹64,000 crore had been spent. That is an all-India utilisation of roughly 57 to 60 per cent—meaning nearly half the money remains unspent while construction workers toil in the shadows of India’s gleaming skylines.
E-Way Bills, Delayed Truths: CAG’s Audit That Arrived Too Late
The Missed Opportunity
Here is the crux: the CAG is not new to thematic, national-level all-India performance audits. It has done this not very long ago, for MGNREGA, for the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, for PMGSY roads, for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
In each case, it drew samples across states, collated findings, and placed before Parliament a composite national picture. That is precisely what was missing in the BOCW case-though some may argue that this subject is not a high-risk area for such an exercise.
This, despite the fact that Supreme Court had expressed serious concern (as we see later) at the short shrifting of welfare of voiceless construction workers.
Instead of one holistic and more focussed report, we now have a dozen scattered state-level audits, each tabled in its own legislature, rarely debated and quickly forgotten. Each of them repeats the same pattern—poor registration, ineligible beneficiaries, idle funds, sloppy governance—but none of them forces Parliament to confront the Centre’s failure to monitor, coordinate, or enforce accountability.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment, custodian of the Act, should have been in the dock. Was it convening the Central Advisory Committee regularly? Did it maintain a national dashboard of cess collection and utilisation? Did it issue binding benchmarks or take possible punitive action against non-performing boards? An all-India performance audit would have demanded answers. State-wise audits let the Ministry escape, as if its role was peripheral when in fact it was pivotal.
The Supreme Court’s Alarm Bell
In 2018, the Supreme Court tore into the lethargy, calling the non-utilisation of cess a “national shame.” That was the perfect cue for the CAG to launch an all-India performance audit, not just of states but of the Centre’s dereliction of duty. Instead, the opportunity was allowed to drift by.
The result: six years later, workers remain excluded, crores remain idle, and the Central Ministry remains unscathed.
From Fragments to a National Reckoning
The CAG must shed its incremental, state-wise approach and at least now, take up an all-India performance audit of BOCW welfare as a matter of urgency. Such an audit should cover cess collection efficiency, fund transfers, identification and registration of genuine beneficiaries, scheme utilisation, administrative expenses, and, crucially, the Centre’s role in monitoring and coordination. This would take not much time as most of the data from states is already with CAG.
A consolidated national report would not only quantify the scandal in stark terms but also place Parliament face-to-face with the Labour Ministry’s dereliction. Unless this happens, other state audits will also likely remain scattered brushstrokes when what the country needs is the full canvas of failure.
Construction workers will continue to live and die outside the welfare net, and the cess meant for them will remain a ritualistic tax instead of a lifeline. The Gujarat episode, then, is not the end of the story—it is only the latest echo of a national tragedy that still awaits its reckoning.
This subject should, more importantly, underline the need for CAG to critically review its overall approach towards undertaking all India performance audits instead of remaining content with audit reports only on states amidst the concern that CAG has almost given up on all India performance audits for quite some time, now. Some would, however, like to remind that CAG is fully empowered to determine the scope, extent and manner of audit he undertakes- and cannot be questioned on his selection. But this unique power or authority is all the more reason that CAG needs to urgently re-orient its approach to since almost abandoned all India performance audits. Let us hope CAG takes an early decision to revive all India performance audits of subjects crying for attention.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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