By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, MAR 30: While cases of car theft are on the rise, the Meghalaya Transport department has failed to make entries in all the relevant fields of Vahan software, rendering the purpose of digitising the vehicle details futile.
As per the CAG report, a huge number of vehicles registered in the five district transport offices (DTOs) left blank their engine number, fitness date, maker model, unladen weight, laden weight, manufacture year, sale amount and laser code.
“With such key data fields missing in the database, it would be difficult for the DTOs to keep check on the vehicles and also for the police to trace vehicles in case of theft,” the report stated.
Besides, the department would have no information to rely upon in case of re-registration of vehicles, especially in cases where the sale value had not been entered.
The report also revealed that the database relating to stolen vehicles were not linked with the police department.
As per Section 62 of the MV Act, the state government may, if it thinks necessary, direct the police department to furnish returns regarding vehicles which have been stolen and those recovered to the transport department.
During analysis of database, it was noticed that during 2011-12 and 2015-16, information pertaining to 57 stolen vehicles was captured in the database of the DTOs of Jowai and Shillong while no record of stolen vehicles was captured in the other three DTOs – Nongpoh, Williamnagar and Mawkyrwat.
However, information furnished by police department of four districts revealed that 428 vehicles were stolen and 103 vehicles were recovered during the same period.
“The unavailability of an automated information sharing system between the police department and transport department is fraught with the risk of subsequent re-registration of these stolen vehicles within the state,” the CAG stated.
Meanwhile, the DTO has also failed to verify the addresses of the vehicles owners while registering the vehicles.
Analysis of the Vahan data of the selected DTOs revealed that 4240 vehicle owners with addresses outside the area of jurisdiction of the concerned DTOs were registered with such DTOs out of which, 1850 vehicle owners were from outside the state.
The report observed that registering a motor vehicle without correct address would render it difficult to trace the vehicle in the event of theft of its involvement in any illegal activity especially in the case of vehicles registered from outside the state.
The CAG recommended that Vahan software may be updated to make data entry of all fields mandatory at the time of registration. Strict monitoring may be ensured for accurate and proper data entry in the system and the software may be provided with mandatory validation controls.
It also recommended that the databases of individual DTOs may be linked to a state wide database.
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