SHILLONG: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India report has said that delay in taking over the weighbridge at Dawki resulted in non-realisation of weighment fee amounting to Rs 2.18 crore.
The CAG report was tabled in the Assembly during its recent Autumn session.
The Transport Department entered into an agreement for operation of a weighbridge at Dawki for a period of one year from January 27, 2015. The agreement expired on January 26, 2016 and the lessee was allowed to continue operations up to June 7, 2016 despite not paying the license fee (proportionate licence fee Rs 22.31 lakh up to June 2016). The government was ordered to take over the control of the weighbridge on June 8, 2016.The audit observed from the records that the DTO, Jowai actually took over control of the weighbridge on October 28, 2016 and no reason for the delay was found on record. Thus, during the intervening period from June 8 to October 27, 2016, there was no monitoring of the movement of goods trucks by the Transport Department and consequently no revenue could be realised by it, either from weighment fee or by way of realising fines for overloading based on weighment slips.
During the period from February to October, 2016, the audit observed that 109118 trucks carrying stone/boulder, limestone, etc., passed through the Land Customs Station (under Customs Department) onwards to Bangladesh. Thus, due to failure of the DTO, Jowai to take over the control of the weighbridge on time and making it operational, the state government suffered a revenue loss of Rs 2.18 crore as weighment fees.
The case was referred to the Transport Department in October 2018. However, no specific reply was received (June 2019) about reasons for not operating the weighbridge till October 2016, when it was taken over by Department in June 2016, which led to the loss of revenue.
The audit noticed failure of the Commissioner of Transport (CT) to detect irregularities in operation of one weighbridge on verification of records out of the 19 in the state. The Department should look into similar issues in respect of other weighbridges also, the CAG noted.The CAG recommended that the Transport Department should fix responsibility on the official concerned for not taking timely action to take over the control of the weighbridge on time which resulted in loss of government revenue.
