Audit Reports
West Bengal
Report of 2010 - Performance Audit on Collection of Motor Vehicle Taxes, Fees and Fines of Government of West Bengal
Overview
This Report contains five chapters which include 33 paragraphs relating to deficiencies in the system of monitoring the registration of vehicles, issue and renewal of licences, permits, collection of taxes, fees and fines and internal controls of the Transport Department of the state involving RS 14.41 crore. Some of the major findings are mentioned in the following paragraphs: As on 30 June 2010, 100 inspection reports issued upto December 2009 containing 267 audit observations involving RS 9.44 crore were outstanding for want of response or final action by the Transport Department.
As of 31 March 2010, the Transport Department had not furnished explanatory notes in respect of seven selected and 202 unselected paragraphs including four sub paragraphs of Audit Reports from 1981-82 to 2007-08. We noticed that the system was implemented in a phased manner and as on 31 March 2009 VAHAN was operational in only 19 RAs out of the 27 units (26 RAs and STA) while SARATHI was operational in nine.
We observed that a security policy had not been formulated by the Department. No guidelines had been issued to the RAs for protection of hardware and software of the system. We noted that due to lack of a business continuity plan, data could not be restored in the office of the RA, South 24 Parganas after a system crash which occurred on 4 September 2008 following which the data was irretrievably lost as the RAs had discontinued the maintenance of any manual register relating to collection of taxes and fees after computerisation of their activities.