A scathing report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has pulled back the curtain on a crisis of accountability within the Kerala Motor Vehicles Department (MVD), revealing that its internal audit mechanism has effectively collapsed under the weight of manpower shortages and a lack of modern tools.

The 2024 Compliance Audit Report, made public on the watchdog's portal on Tuesday, paints a grim picture of a department that is failing to police itself, leaving billions of rupees in potential revenue and public safety at risk.

Targets missed, oversight ignored

The internal audit wing, responsible for scrutinising the State Transport Authority, Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) and check posts, is currently operating at a fraction of its required capacity.

According to the CAG, the department failed to meet even half of its audit targets for the 2023-24 financial year. Out of 110 units slated for inspection, only 42 were actually audited.

The department's defence for this lapse was a familiar refrain of a "shortage of manpower" and the total absence of specialised audit software, which has forced a continued reliance on slow, manual processes.

A mountain of unresolved red tape

Perhaps most alarming is the staggering backlog of unresolved audit observations. As of 2024, the MVD is sitting on a mountain of 5,711 outstanding internal audit paragraphs. The pace of resolution is glacial: during the last financial year, the department managed to clear just 148 paragraphs — a mere 2.59 per cent of the total backlog.

This internal paralysis is mirrored in the department's response to external CAG inspections. As of June 2024, there were 2,267 outstanding audit observations involving a staggering ₹388.91 crore in potential revenue. Despite this massive financial risk, the MVD failed to hold even a single Departmental Audit Committee meeting during 2023-24 to settle these long-pending issues.

Consequences beyond the ledger

The CAG report makes it clear that these oversight failures are not just clerical errors; they have real-world consequences. The lack of rigorous internal checking has contributed to a culture of non-compliance that the CAG's own Subject Specific Compliance Audit (SSCA) exposed in detail:

Road safety risks: More than 48,000 transport vehicles were found to be operating with expired Fitness Certificates.

The audit linked these oversight lapses to 197 accidents and 19 fatalities involving such vehicles.

Revenue leakage: The combined failure to enforce registration renewals and permit conditions resulted in the non-collection of fines and fees exceeding ₹60 crore.

Automation failures: Despite spending ₹37.48 crore on modernising test tracks and stations to reduce human intervention, most facilities remain non-functional, leaving the door open to manual errors and a lack of transparency.

CAG's final verdict

The CAG has issued a stern warning to the State Government, recommending that it immediately strengthen the internal control system and the internal audit wing to prevent the recurrence of these irregularities.

"Government needs to improve the internal control system, including strengthening of internal audit, so that occurrence/recurrence of such cases can be avoided," the report concludes.

For a department that serves as one of the major revenue sources for the state exchequer, the message is clear: the MVD can no longer afford to leave its own books unchecked.