Nothing official-Skelton staff

Nothing official-Skelton staff

When I joined Bharat Electronics during 1974 November, my first posting was in Internal Audit Department. In those days employees were properly placed and not misplaced. There are examples galore. Adithyan in Audit, Kashmirilal in Cash, AC Sharma in Air conditioning plant, Kanoon Kumar in legal department, Bhimsen in Canteen etc. Besides me there were 3 more Accountant/Senior Accountant in Internal audit, another lean and thin fellow Unnikrishnan, and two fat persons Sablok (Not all people) and Malhotra. Subsequently Malhotra left BEL and Sablok was temporarily posted to Regional Office New Delhi. (He remained there for 28 years and retired from there).At that time payment of final bills, purchase orders beyond some value etc were required to be vetted (Not wetting) by Audit before they are released. Some Auditors virtually wet the file containing the proposal put up for vetting by Audit through various means. Many Auditors love to sit on the fence and watch all the mishappenings so that they can come out with voluminous Audit Reports which takes months to read. This practice is being followed by several others also. (Latest example, Adarsh Flats).  Now a days only Post mortem-sorry post audit is there. Head of Audit Department thought of empowering Accountants and prepared a draft proposal. He asked me to go through the proposal and give comments. The proposal reads like this “…..Audit is working with Skeleton staff at the supervisory level…” I told him “Sir, what you have written is literally correct. If Sablok and Malhotra were here, you would not have made such a remark….”