The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has pulled up the Kerala police department for splurging the police modernisation funds on buying luxury cars for its senior officers instead of procuring vehicles to be used in police stations.
"The police department violated Modernization of Police Force (MoPF) scheme guidelines during 2013-18 which prohibited procurement of cars. Instead of making good the shortfall of vehicles in police stations, 15 per cent of the 269 Light Motor Vehicles procured by the police department were luxury cars which were deployed for use of high-level officers and non-operational units like CBCID," the CAG report 2018 said.
Moreover, 41 of the 64 vehicles procured were either cars or luxury vehicles such as Toyota Crysta, Innova, Maruti Ciaz, Maruti Ertiga, Swift Dzire etc, which were not eligible for procurement under MoPF scheme.
The auditor observed that eight of the 64 vehicles that were allotted to non-operational units like Crime Branch Criminal Investigation Department (CBCID), 25 vehicles like Bolero and Tata Sumo Gold were transferred to Vigilance Department, which is not covered under MoPF scheme.
"The audit observes that instead of procuring 41 luxury vehicles, the police department should have purchased 69 vehicles to meet the requirement of five police stations that did not have any Light Motor Vehicle (LMV) and 57 of 193 police stations which were provided with only one LMV. The operational efficiency of these police stations could certainly have been enhanced," the report said.
The CAG also rapped the police department for procurement of two Toyota Innova cars as Mobile Command Control Medium Vehicle.
"Of the two Toyota Innova cars procured, one was allotted to Kozhikode city for the use of Additional Director General of Police, North Zone, and the other one was allotted to police headquarters. The fact that CVC guidelines were not complied... vehicles were procured by police department not for deployment at the police station level, but for use of its senior officers. These vehicles were labelled as 'command and control vehicles' only to circumvent the MoPF guidelines which did not approve the procurement of cars under the scheme," said the report.
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