Duplicate issuance cover notes, multiple licences on one note detected
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Apr 15: The Motor Vehicles Department, which is primarily responsible for enforcement of the provisions of the Act and Rules, is itself violating the law with impunity. This conclusion can easily be drawn from the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.
As per Section 6 of Central Motor Vehicle Act, 1988, no person can hold two driving licenses but from the analysis of database of four RTOs and ARTOs by the CAG it came to fore that two separate driving licenses had been issued to the same person in 298 cases and four licenses had been issued to a single person by one RTO.
Stating that there was no check on issuance of more than one licenses in the Department, the CAG report said, “this indicates deficient input controls and validation checks in the software to check such cases”.
Similarly, Rule 61(1(A) of the Motor Vehicle Act states that fitness certificates granted under the Act in respect of newly registered transport vehicle is valid for two years and is required to be renewed every year on payment of the prescribed fee applicable to the category of the vehicle.
But, scrutiny of database of RTO Jammu and RTO Srinagar revealed that fitness certificates in respect of 63 school buses (34 under RTO Srinagar and 29 under RTO Jammu) were not renewed even after a lapse of three years, the CAG report said while regretting that the Department had made no efforts to trace out the vehicle despite the fact that the same was imperative to ensure safety of children.
The tale of violating own rules by the Motor Vehicle Department doesn’t end here as the CAG has found that one insurance cover note was being used by two or more vehicle owners in sheer violation of Section 146 of the Central Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.
“In 28,024 cases, multiple cover insurance was entered into the system”, the CAG said, adding “under a single insurance cover note vehicles ranging from two to 933 were being registered thereby indicating that the Department was not following the provisions of the Act”.
As far as engine number/ chassis number are concerned, the CAG analysis of data-base revealed 3032 cases of duplicate engine numbers, 17 cases of duplicate chassis and 53 cases of blank engine number in seven test-checked RTOs/ARTOs.
The CAG has also found deficiencies in the collection of tax from the owners of the vehicles. J&K Motor Vehicle Taxation Act, 1957 and Rules stipulate that tax should be paid by the owner of a vehicle in advance and in case of default in payment, additional tax at the rate of 2 per cent of such tax for each month is leviable.
However, the test check of database of seven RTOs/ARTOs revealed that the system was not designed for auto generation of information in respect of the vehicles that had defaulted in payment of tax. Due to this the Department was not aware of the total number of owners that had defaulted in payment of tax.
“Though this exercise could have been completed with the help of software by performing some additional exercises yet no attention was paid by the department to ascertain actual number of vehicles that were on road and liable to pay tax”, the report said, adding “13,369 goods and passenger vehicles were found defaulted in payment of tax to the tune of Rs 12.36 crore in seven computerized RTOs/ARTOs”.
According to the CAG report, Union Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, in March 2005, granted Rs 1.29 crore for implementation of VAHAN and SARTHI software packages at 14 locations—RTO Jammu, Kathua and Srinagar, ARTO Budgam, Baramulla, Udhampur, Rajouri, Leh, Anantnag, Pulwama, Poonch, Kargil, Kupwara and Doda.
However, there was delay ranging from six months to 49 months in implementation of the sytem in eight districts while the system was not implemented in the remaining six districts at all, the report said, adding “due to this the objective of the creation of software packages was not achieved”.
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