By Gyan Pathak
August 25, 2026 is marked by two significant things – First, the release of Monthly Flash Report on Infrastructure Projects worth Rs 150 crore and above – July 2026, and Secondly, 53rd PRAGATI meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The former revealed that 1775 projects across 17 central ministries and departments are being monitored, and cumulative cost overrun was above Rs3.4 lakh crore, due to systemic execution delays and time overrun. In the later, Prime Minister himself pointed out the quality lag. This shows that Narendra Modi’s PRAGATI meetings are not effective beyond his political stunt.
“Do we need to go for a fourth-party audit?” PM Modi reportedly asked secretaries at the Centre and chief secretaries in the states. He also reportedly made the observation that though “third-party” audit of quality of works is a standard practice, this might not be working as expected. A section of Media, rather than highlighting the maladministration and corruption in the projects, and also the failure of the government under PM Narendra Modi in this regard making him accountable, highlighted how Modi was really concerned.
PMO’s press release said that PM, in the 53rd PRAGATI meeting called for continuous reforms across all stages of project implementation and a proactive work culture across Ministries and States. PM reviewed six key infrastructure projects across the Railway, Road, and Power sectors. Projects reviewed span across 9 states with cumulative investment of more than Rs30,000 crore. He said that infrastructure projects should be viewed as an integrated whole, rather than an individual sections or packages. PM also said that speed must go hand-in-hand with quality.
Now the question is, if under his leadership, the projects are delayed, and quality not maintained, who is to be accountable? Is it not his leadership? Should we find only scapegoats to be sacrificed for all this, and make PM Narendra Modi sacrosanct? Is this the symptom of an able prime ministers, under whose leadership thousands of big projects were announced, may of them just before elections, and not seriously taken for implementation of thousands of them, even the government claims they are under serious monitoring? Are his good talks without concrete actions not merely a political stunt?
Apprehension about the “third-party audit” expressed by PM Narendra Modi himself, and talking for “fourth-party” audit gives a strong basis for a critical and evidence-based assessment of the PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation) itself which was launched in 2015 as a technology enabled mechanism through which the Prime Minister could directly review stalled projects, Centre-State coordination problems and public grievances. The idea was straightforward: instead of allowing files to circulate indefinitely between ministries and state governments, bring the responsible officers together before the Prime Minister and force a decision. If it is the case, how and what the PM was monitoring, which led to such an inordinate delay, cost overruns, and doubtful third-party audits? What does it mean when PM Modi talks about fourth-party audit, and will it be over suspicions?
PM Modi’s dissatisfaction over the third-party audit does show that the third-party quality assurance can itself be poorly designed, inadequately independent, conducted too late, ignored by implementing agencies, or simply not followed up, if we can ignore the possibility of corruption in the implementation of the projects, which the opposition has always been alleging.
On the ground level, as per the latest report by MoSPI, the total revised cost of these projects stands at ₹37.10 lakh crore, up from an original cost of ₹33.70 lakh crore, marking a cumulative cost overrun of ₹3,40,504 crore. Cumulative expenditure on these monitored 1,775 assets has reached ₹19.26 lakh crore (about 51.91% of their revised total cost). Only around 38% (675 projects) have achieved more than 80% physical progress.
Nevertheless, the government’s numbers on achievement of PRAGATI have traditionally been attractively produced. Take the 50th PRAGATI meeting as example, during which the PMO said that 377 projects had been reviewed since 2014, involving 3,162 identified issues, of which 2,958 — about 94% — had been resolved. It also said the PRAGATI ecosystem had accelerated projects worth more than ₹85 lakh crore. However, government’s own data on monored projects do not show acceleration of implementation, though work of only some of the projects accelerated after PM’s intervention.
However, there is a fundamental problem with PMO’s measurement of progress of work of projects. It brought forward headline figure of Rs85 lakh crore “accelerated”, which does not mean completed projects. So, the statement was more political than the actual work on the ground.
One should note that PRAGATI is essentially a monitoring and problem-solving mechanism. Therefore, PMO’s statement that “issue resolved” is only an administrative output, and it is not necessarily a development outcome, as the latest report of MoSPI shows. In the similar vein, “project accelerated” is not the same thing as “project completed successfully”. The PMO’s presentation of PRAGATI is thus faulty on substance, and excellent on building of stronger political image of PM Narendra Modi.
PRAGATI’s real strength should be accountability of the government, including at the Prime Minister’s level, not merely on finding scapegoat for saving PM Narendra Modi’s failure, who goes on announcing projects before elections, and many of them suffer neglect after the elections are over.
Though PMO claims that PRAGATI brings departmental “silos” to “Team India” (altogether) for effective and timely implementation of the projects, the reality is that the system is highly personalised, as if successful implementation of the projects is dependent upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally reviewing them. “Team India” claim is thus false. This is perhaps the greatest weakness in India’s current working system, which do not work properly, and needs prompt from Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
The “fourth-party” remark of PM Modi is actually very revealing. If the government has its own engineers, and then appoints an independent third-party quality agency, yet poor-quality infrastructure is still being delivered, who is then auditing the auditors?
CAG in one of its reports explicitly said that independent third-party inspection is complementary and cannot replace the contractor’s and department’s required quality-control procedures. It shows, how Modi government has been using the third-party audits. It clearly shows that India needs a more robust system than the third-party audits, which Modi government has put in place. Therefore, public disclosure and accountability on the third-party audits are imperative. In several of its report CAG has flagged problems with third party-audits, some of them existed only on papers but did not produce the required inspections, and evaluation had not been carried out at all.
PM Modi’s talking “fourth-party audit”, in this backdrop, is significant, which utterly reveals failure of his government so far on implementation of projects with quality and in time. Then the question is what will be the “fourth-party audit”? (IPA Service)
PM’s Pragati meetings not effective beyond political stunt
