By: Vivek Gupta Giving security a miss, the Registering and Licensing Authority (RLA) in Sector 17 has been keeping its daily collection of revenue from registration of vehicles and driving licensing fee in a room, without any protection. This was pointed out in the recent audit report submitted to the RLA by the the office of Director General of Audit (Comptroller and Audit General of India). The report revealed that the RLA has been involved in daily collection ranging from Rs 3 lakh to nearly Rs 1 crore each day. During the financial year 2013-14, the total revenue worked out to be over Rs 100 crore. But the money is kept in an ordinary room and submitted to the treasury only the next day. There is no chest, or strong room, alarm facility or even armed security guards to protect the money. The audit report pointed that this practice has been continuing for several years even as the daily collection had increased manifold. “Keeping such a huge amount everyday in the office room without any protection is unsafe. There the audit is of the opinion that immediate steps need to be taken before it is too late,” the report says. The report further revealed that the RLA’s approach is in violation of government norms. As per general finance rules (2005), any government department involved in collection of revenue on day to day basis from general public is required to keep the money in a chest along with a strong room in safe custody to get the same deposited into the government treasury by the next day. Further, to secure the deposit in the premises, an alarm system and armed security guards are required to safeguard the money till it is deposited. The RLA office has none of this. The report also said that similar objections were raised in the last audit report too, but the department was yet to comply with these. Non-furnishing of deposits by staff handling cash The CAG report says that under rule 275 of the general finance rules, 2005, every government servant who handles cash is required to furnish security and to execute a security bond in form of cash or in the form of a fidelity bond. However during a check of records, the RLA had not obtained any fidelity bond from those persons handling the government money in the department. Further, revenue collected from its two sub-offices in Industrial Area and Sector 42 are being deposited in the Sector 17 RLA office by contractual staff instead of regular government employees — another violation of norms and a security concern. While RLA incharge Kashish Mittal did not come on record despite several attempts, RLA in its response to the audit department said that a branch of the State Bank of India will be opened in the basement of its office and necessity of security deposit and fidelity bond from the staff will dispensed with. However, an official said that the proposal of opening a SBI branch has been held up for a long time now. “The department had recently requested the chief engineer and UT police to provide the facilities as raised in the audit report but the compliance is pending,” the official said.
