The Hindu : New Delhi News : `Transport accounts do not add up'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 06, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

`Transport accounts do not add up'

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 5. The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India for the year ended March 2004 has pointed to a number of discrepancies in the Transport Department in Delhi.

The report states that an information technology review of activities relating to registration of vehicles, collection of fees and road tax and issue of driving licences by Transport Department revealed that it had invested Rs 9.84 crores without constituting a Steering Committee and without a formal IT policy or strategy. Consequently, the system suffered from a number of deficiencies.

It also said that networking of headquarters office with zonal offices and the national Crime Records Bureau could not be achieved despite incurring of expenditure of Rs 72.53 lakhs. Also, it pointed out that the expenditure of Rs 28.35 lakhs on leasing of MTNL lines proved to be infructuous.

The report has also stated that there were a large number of cases of duplicate chassis numbers and engine numbers which were not only illegal but were also fraught with risk of plying of invalid or stolen vehicles.

The system, it said, lacked proper validation checks and the database was both unreliable and incomplete.

Further, the test check of five zones revealed net short levy of fees of Rs 14.09 lakhs attributable to lack of proper validation, incomplete and incorrect information and failure to integrate the database of different zones.

Finally with respect to the Transport Department, the report said the potential revenue of Rs 26.32 crores was blocked due to non-disposal of challans and the possibility of unauthorised disposal of challans could also not be ruled out.

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