Road Min's plan cause Rs 1.85 cr unfruitful expenditure: CAG

The road ministry's inefficient planning and monitoring led to unfruitful expenditure of Rs 1.85 crore on the eight traffic counters procured from Canada in 2008, the CAG said today.
"The ministry procured (March 2008) eight Weigh-in-Motion cum Automatic Traffic Counter cum Classifiers. While two machines were commissioned after a delay of almost eight years, the remaining machines were still lying uninstalled," the government auditor Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India said in report tabled in Parliament today.
The machines were procured from International Road Dynamics Inc Canada at a cost of CAD 462,659.00 ( Rs 1.89 crore, including transportation of Rs 2.16 lakh) vide Ministry's purchase order dated 23 March, 2007 with the objective of assisting the control of overloading of vehicles and collection of electronic data, the report said.

"Due to inefficient planning and ineffective monitoring on the part of the ministry, six systems were not yet installed even after lapse of eight years from the date of procurement... Thus, while the objective of collecting electronic data of axle load, aimed at preventing overloading, could not be achieved, the expenditure of Rs 1.85 crore also remained unfruitful," CAG said in the report.
The report said that the two systems consigned to Goa were transferred to West Bengal in May 2009 but scrutiny of the records revealed that only two systems were installed and commissioned in January 2016 at Hassan and Koppal in Karnataka, which were not handed over to the State Transport Department till January 2016.

Remaining systems were not installed till December 2016, it said, adding that audit further noticed that after incurring an expenditure of Rs 0.87 crore on civil works in Pratapgarh, Rajasthan, the system was transferred in September 2014 to Tamil Nadu.