CAG flags unfruitful expenditure of Rs 10 cr for police centre

The CAG has flagged unfruitful expenditure of Rs 10 crore by Home Ministry in setting up of pre-fabricated structures to conduct trainings for police personnel at an institute in Madhya Pradesh.
The Home Ministry had in March 2009 approved establishment of a Central Academy for Police Training (CAPT) at Bhopal at an approved outlay of Rs 47.14 crore.
The academy was to provide training to the trainers of the state police training institutes and directly recruited Deputy Superintendents of Police (DSP) of states.
Madhya Pradesh government had allotted 400 acres of land, free of cost, to Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) for setting up of CAPT.

"Audit observed that the project, which was envisaged to be implemented during the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12), was not taken up during the plan due to issues relating to encroachments, deficient road connectivity, inadequate electricity and resistance by villagers to demarcate the area in the proposed land," the CAG said in a report tabled in Parliament today.
The Ministry later decided to revise the scope of work as a result, the cost of setting up of CAPT was further revised to Rs 281 crore by the Expenditure Finance Committee in October 2012 with the stipulated date of completion as March 2016. This was further extended to December, it said.

"Audit observed that the project did not pick up adequate momentum and the physical progress had reached up to only 20 per cent and Rs 76.75 crore had been released by the Ministry as of June 2015.

"As of December 2015 a sum of Rs 72.96 crore had been incurred on the project. Thus, the Ministry was not in a position to complete the project within the stipulated time frame," the report said.
Meanwhile, in November 2010, the Ministry was informed by BPRD that construction of permanent structure would take time since many issues were to be resolved and therefore, the training could be started at an early date by constructing Pre-Fabricated structures (PFs).

"Audit also observed that no training was organised in these PFs due to remote location of the academy, non-availability of approach road, lack of security arrangements and non-induction of permanent faculty and supporting staff.
"Out of 90 PFs, 20 were used for administrative purposes, eight by Central Public Works Department for monitoring of construction activities and 62 were not in use or locked as of June 2015," the CAG said.
Thus, while the envisaged objective of establishing a central academy remained unfulfilled, even the move to construct PFs to counter delays in meeting the training requirements proved injudicious, despite time and cost overruns. This ultimately led to unfruitful expenditure of Rs 10.13 crore on their construction, it said.