Mail News Service
Imphal, July 23: The Transport Department, one of the major revenue earning Departments in the State of Manipur, is responsible for exercising control over the work of registration and regularisation of the vehicles which ply in the State, grant of permits to transport vehicles, levy and collection of taxes, fee and penalties, issue of driving and conductors’ licence and certificates of fitness to transport vehicles.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India had embarked upon a scheme for creation of a National Database network by introduction of Information Technology in the Road Transport Departments. Thus, the Central Government has been encouraging the States to work on standardised application formats and to undertake computerisation of backend processing, based on such standardised formats and inter operatable software, so that the Registration Certificates/National permits/driving licences are readable throughout the country. For this, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) designed two software viz. (1) VAHAN for registration, assessment of taxes/fee and fitness of the vehicles and (2) SARATHI for issue/renewal of the driving licence. The software was made operational in six of the eight District Transport Offices (DTOs) in the State in January 2011.
Though computerisation programme of VAHAN and SARATHI for registration of vehicles/driving licenses started in six of the eight DTOs in December 2003 and got completed in January 2011 after delays ranging from 12 to 41 months, commercial transport vehicles were not registered in VAHAN and neither was Enforcement Module implemented.
Out of a total of 1,06,752 vehicles registered prior to implementation of ‘VAHAN’ software in the DTOs, backlog legacy data entry in respect of 78,000 vehicles Le. 73 per cent, had been completed.
Thus, the State Register and National Register were incomplete to that extent.
Two different registration numbers were assigned to 43 vehicles, having same chassis numbers, by different DTOs.
Mandatory fields like address, father’s name and engine number etc. were not captured in VAHAN in absence of validation controls in the software by allowing entry of incomplete records. No sale amount was entered in respect of 1215 personalised four wheeler vehicles purchased after 31 March 2011, resulting in manual collection of tax.
Insurance details were not entered in respect of vehicles. Absence of a valid insurance certificate/cover note number in relevant field of the software could lead to a possibility of vehicles getting registered without payment of insurance.
Except Initial district, the remaining DTOs had not issued all driving licences through Smart Card. The practice of issuing driving licences partly through Smart Card and partly manually defeated the objective of introducing ‘SARATHI’ software.
The New National Permit System was implemented after a delay of almost a year.
Hand Held Terminals (HHTs), essential for checking the Smart Cards, had not been purchased by MANITRON21 as per the terms of the contract. Consequently the Department cannot verify the authenticity of Smart Cards possessed by the vehicle owners in absence of HHTs.
Out of 26,494 registration certificates issued till September 2011, Smart Card registration certificates were issued in 22,285 cases. Thus, paper based registration certificates continued to be issued by the DTOs.
CAG recommend that the Department may ensure that registration numbers are issued serially and only after completion of an ongoing series.
Analysis of database of the five DTOs revealed that out of 33,558 vehicles, the tax amount was left blank in respect of 193 vehicles registered after the implementation of computerisation in the DTOs. This shows lack of validation control in the system to ensure that the data relating to all the mandatory fields are entered.
Acceptance of blank field in respect of a mandatory field (tax) by the system in the case of new registration needs a detailed examination as it may give rise to the risk of evasion of tax.
The Department in their reply (November 2011) stated that the aforesaid irregularity occurred while entering backlog data or transferred vehicles and necessary steps shall be taken to avoid such irregularities in future. The reply of the Department is not relevant and hence not acceptable.
It recommended that the Department may strengthen the validation check in ‘VAHAN’ software to ensure that incomplete/blank information is not accepted for mandatory fields.
As per Section 5 of the MMVT Act, 1998, tax leviable shall be paid in advance in a one-time tax valid till the vehicle attains the age of fifteen years at the prescribed rate.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/irregularities-in-transport-deptt-cag/
