V N Kaul

Early life and background

Vijayendra Nath Kaul was born to Shri Satindra Nath Kaul and his wife Padmavati ( née Kak ) in Jammu in a Kashmiri Brahmin family with a long history of public service. His great grandfather Rai Bahadur Radha Kishen Kaul was the High Court Judge of Jammu & Kashmir and head of the judiciary in the State up to 1913. His grandfather Pandit Narendra Nath Kaul, an early Indian cantabrigian, was the Revenue Minister in the Council of Ministers of Maharaja Pratap Singh of Jammu & Kashmir.

V.N.Kaul started school at Presentation Convent in Srinagar but after a couple of months he was moved to Rev J.D.Tytler's school in Delhi. He completed Senior Cambridge in 1959 from St. Joseph's Academy, Dehradun. He got his B.A. (Hons) and master's degrees from St. Stephens College, University of Delhi in 1964 and he joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1965. Kaul was allocated the Madhya Pradesh cadre of the IAS and began his civil service career as Assistant Collector, Bilaspur District in Madhya Pradesh. His other field postings in Madhya Pradesh were Collector and District Magistrate, Shahdol District, Collector and District Magistrate, Durg District and Commissioner, Indore Division.

Civil Service Career

Kaul has worked at senior levels in the government and in the United Nations. He served in the Indian Administrative Service up to 2002 and retired as Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on being appointed the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Prior to serving as Petroleum Secretary he was Secretary in the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers and the Ministry of Coal. Earlier, he was Finance Secretary, Secretary, Commerce and Industry and Principal Secretary, Finance and Home Departments of the Government of Madhya Pradesh.

He has been Chairman of public sector and joint sector companies in Madhya Pradesh and in the Government of India including Chairman, Petronet LNG. He has also served as a Director of many private companies and he has been on the Governing Boards of International Bodies including the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions, Vienna (INTOSAI) and the Asian Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (ASOSAI) .

United Nations

Kaul has had two stints in the United Nations. He was Regional Adviser, Trade Policy with United Nations-ESCAP at Bangkok, Thailand from 1991 to 1998. He served for a second time in the United Nations from 2008 to 2011 as Vice-Chairman of the United Nations Independent Audit Advisory Committee, New York.

Comptroller and Auditor General of India

As C&AG of India, Kaul modernized and strengthened public audit in India. He introduced seminal reforms in audit practices by promulgating, for the first time, clear guidelines on the extent and scope of audit and by developing an internationally benchmarked methodology for performance auditing. He was on the Panel of External Auditors of the United Nations from 2002 to 2007. He was elected to audit WHO. Kaul was also the External Auditor of the Food and Agriculture Organization,Rome;, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), London;, and, the World Tourism Organization, Madrid.

From 2002 to 2008 he was Secretary-General of ASOSAI. and the Chairman of the INTOSAI's IT Audit Committee.

He is serving on the Eminent Persons Advisory Group (EPAG) of the Competition Commission of India as of May 2012. Mr. Kaul is also a member of the Oversight Committee for monetisation of immovable assets of Air India and to advise on the process of valuation of such assets. In June 2015, on being invited by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Mr. Kaul has joined the Core Group of SRI: the Knowledge Research Initiative of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.