Over 16 per cent of vehicles plying on the roads in Gujarat were operating with invalid fitness certificates, posing “a potential threat” to road safety, said the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its latest audit report.
The report for the five-year period beginning April 2019 was tabled in the Gujarat Assembly during its budget session last month.
The auditor also found that fitness certificates were issued to a large number of vehicles which do not have speed governors or ‘pollution under control’ certificates (PUCCs).
The CAG, which has audited nine of the 37 Regional Transport Offices in the state including those in four major cities of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot and Surat, has found that of the 31.5 lakh registered vehicles under these RTOs, nearly five lakh were unfit to operate.
The state recorded a registration of nearly 75 lakh vehicles across all its 37 RTOs in the five year audit period of which 2,28,397 transport vehicles and 29,22,137 non transport vehicles were registered in the nine RTOs covered by the CAG.
In its report, the CAG said that the transport officers from the Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) and Assistant RTOs did not take any steps to enforce the safety provisions when the vehicle owners failed to produce their vehicles for inspection and renewal of fitness and PUC certificates.
Under the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, owners of transport vehicles are required to get their vehicles inspected once every two years after registration, and once every year for vehicles that are eight years old or older.
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The Motor Vehicles Act prohibits plying of unfit vehicles on road and also stipulates that a transport vehicle is not validly registered unless it carries a certificate of fitness.
“These vehicles could be a potential threat to road safety as many of these vehicles were being issued permits and there were no records to establish that the vehicles owners had submitted any intimation regarding keeping their vehicles off road,” the report stated. Notably, these were mainly transport vehicles and other specific vehicles, ie, vehicles besides personal passenger vehicles.
“The registering authorities did not take necessary steps to ensure that only the validly registered vehicles ply on the roads. Though RCs (registration certificates) of 5,36,634 vehicles had expired between April 1,2019 and March 31,2024, the vehicle owners had neither reported destruction/ incapacitation of their vehicles nor renewed the RCs. Thus, there was non-realisation of potential renewal fees of Rs 88.58 crore leviable for renewal of RC,” the CAG report said.
Citing the VAHAN (the centralised platform for registration of vehicles managed by the Ministry of Roads Transport and Highways) data, the CAG noted that 1.95 lakh vehicles which did not have PUC certificates were declared fit. In the case of over one lakh vehicles, either the pollution certificate had expired when the vehicle was declared fit or the PUC certificate was taken after the fitness certificate was issued.
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Vehicles were plying on road without installing speed governors, high security registration plate, and vehicle tracking system device (commercial vehicles) in violation of the extant provisions which poses security and regulation risks. Analysis of toll booth data revealed that vehicles were plying on road in violation of the existing motor vehicle laws, the auditor states.
Transport vehicles without speed governors
On analysis of VAHAN data of vehicles registered between April 2009 and March 2024, the auditor observed that the 2,05,811 transport vehicles manufactured between April 2009 and September 2015 did not have speed governors fitted on. As many 1.16 lakh vehicles of these were declared fit, the auditor noted.
Similarly, of the 4.46 lakh transport vehicles manufactured without speed governors in the period from October 2015, nearly 60 % of them were issued fitness certificates.
As per the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, all transport vehicles, except those exempted, and manufactured on or after October 1, 2015, were required to have speed governors set at a maximum of 60-80 kmph on or before April 1, 2016.
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When the auditor sought an explanation from the Commissioner of Transport, the office stated in September 2025 that fitment of speed governors was ensured manually. The office of the CoT said that the information about the vehicles having the speed governors “could not be updated on the portal”.
Not finding the CoT’s response convincing, the CAG said, “The claim of manual verification does not address the statutory requirement that compliance with speed governor norms must be ensured and recorded before issuing a fitness certificate. The omission of speed governor data for more than six lakh vehicles, coupled with issuance of fitness certificates to a large number of them, indicates systemic lapses in enforcement and inadequate validation controls in VAHAN. The speculative possibility of some older vehicles being off road does not justify fitness certification without confirming fitment”.
When contacted, Commissioner of Transport Rajender Kumar told The Indian Express, “Many things have changed since the audit was conducted.”
The process
The CAG reviewed the records of Ports and Transport Department for the period from April 1,2019 to March 31,2024 and between August 13,2024 and February 15,2025. Back-end and front-end data of VAHAN and SARATHI applications were checked and examination of records at the office of Commissioner of Transport and selected RTOs for the period was conducted as part of the audit.
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The 37 RTOs and ARTOs of the State were classified based on geographical locations – North Gujarat, South Gujarat, Central and West. These RTOs, ARTOs were further categorised as high, medium and low based on volume of transactions and revenue collected during the period 2019-24.
The nine RTOs – Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara, Kheda, Sabarkantha, Jamnagar, Tapi and Gir Somnath – were picked through sampling for the audit.
