An audit of vehicles hired by police for ferrying its constabulary during the 2014 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir has found alleged irregularities of Rs 6.09 crore due to double drawals and hiring of fictitious vehicles.
In its report, the auditor has alleged that the Police Headquarters did not involve the process of open tendering for hiring of vehicles and instead instructed its DDOs that hiring be done from transport agencies on the rates of State Road Transport Corporation with 20 per cent discount after adhering all codal formalities.
"The DDOs (drawing and disbursing officers) hired vehicles from transport agencies without any verification and without following any codal formalities.
"Audit of the records of hiring of vehicles and payments and their cross-verification with collateral evidences suggested fraud and misappropriation of public money," the 162-page report, which was sent to Director General of Police for comments last month, said.
Meanwhile, Director General of Police K Rajendra Kumar has referred the matter to Crime Branch and sought a report.
Immediately after receiving the audit report, the matter was referred to the Crime Branch for thorough time bound inquiry, Kumar said.
He said the report should be submitted within four to five days.
"We will be filing our comments after receiving the report from Crime Branch and also after satisfying ourselves once again about the observations made in the report. We will look into it objectively," he added.
According to the report, the Centre provided Rs 115. 68 crore for carriage of constabulary and hiring of vehicles under the head Security Related Expenditure (SRE) to the J&K Police for conducting the parliamentary elections, 2014 and the state assembly elections (ended December 22, 2014).
The report focuses on records with regard to vehicles hired by nine DDOs who were sampled.
Audit test checked records of 5,957 vehicles out of 8,996 vehicles (Parliamentary and Assembly Elections) hired by nine DDOs.
"755 vehicles stated to have been deployed and paid were fictitious. The nature of mismatch include scooters and motor cycles, small four wheeler cars and taxis (Mahindra Tractor, Bulldozer) have been shown hired as carrier for constabulary.
"In few cases, registration number of vehicles shown as hired and against which payments have been made, actually are condemned as per the record of the RTO (Tata Sumo bearing no JKB 5826)," the report claimed.
In certain other cases, registration numbers of vehicles
against which payment has been drawn, have yet not been allotted by the RTOs. It has resulted in Fraud and Embezzlement of Rs 414.58 lakh.
"As if the ghost vehicles would not suffice, audit found that records of four DDOs included expenditure of hiring charges of Rs 4.66 lakh against seven government vehicles, as if they too have been hired from outside.
"The registration records of the RTOs showed the vehicles as government vehicles," the report said.
The then SSP PCR Jammu had drawn Rs 1.40 lakh twice as charges of the vehicles hired from an agency against two bills for the same period.
The report also mentioned that appropriate amount of tax was not deducted while making the payments.
Police Headquarters had directed all the DDOs that all types of hired vehicles must be de-hired by or before December 24, 2014 but it was observed that the SSP PCR Jammu had retained 771 hired vehicles beyond the prescribed date, the report said, adding the department had made the irregular payment of Rs 22.23 lakh to the transport agencies for the extended period.
The report said against the police headquarter's authorization for hiring of 7,266 vehicles, a total of 9,310 vehicles had been hired by the 29 DDOs; an excess of 2,044 vehicles.
"This resulted in an avoidable excess expenditure of Rs 25.89 lakh per day. Since the day wise details of the excess hired vehicles was not available, therefore the total amount in question could not be worked out.
"The regularisation of excess hired vehicles had not been obtained as of January 2016," it added.
The audit report said that two SSPs (Baramulla and Bandipora) had drawn Rs 1.04 crore hire charges of vehicles merely on the list of vehicles prepared by the department without any supporting bill of the transporters, thus rendering the payment irregular.
"Besides it, SSP Bandipora had passed/accepted the bills of the four transporters (10 vouchers) for an amount of Rs 47.07 lakh in lump sum for Assembly election without mentioning the details of the vehicles provided for hiring, thus the expenditure could not be vouchsafed in audit," it added.
