A damning Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India report on Gujarat’s transport ecosystem exposes systemic regulatory collapse ranging from massive revenue leakages and data failures to serious road safety risks and weak enforcement across RTOs.
Report of the “Comptroller and Auditor General of India for the period ended March 2024” peels back layer after layer of systemic lapses and what begins as compliance failure quickly snowballs into a full-blown governance breakdown across Gujarat’s transport machinery.
At the core of the audit lies the functioning of the State Transport Authority and Regional Transport Offices, where scrutiny of VAHAN and SARATHI databases, backed by ground-level verification across nine RTOs from April 2019 to March 2024, reveals a pattern of weak controls, flawed data systems, and ineffective enforcement.
The first red flag emerges in vehicle registration compliance where a staggering 5,36,634 vehicles continued in limbo with expired Registration Certificates, yet neither were they declared scrapped nor renewed, directly translating into a revenue loss potential of Rs 88.58 crore, exposing how regulatory inaction is quietly draining state finances. This failure is compounded by faulty system controls, where incorrect vehicle categorisation and data entry errors distort the integrity of transport databases undermining not just revenue assessment but also policy planning.
The breakdown deepens further in permit enforcement, where authorities issued fitness certificates, permits, and Pollution Under Control Certificates without ensuring compliance or collecting due government revenue while 1,91,977 new vehicles were left without State permits as of March 2024, effectively operating outside the regulatory net.
Delays in permit issuance paint an even grimmer picture with timelines stretching from 31 days to a shocking 1,808 days, including 4,839 cases delayed beyond 500 days, highlighting administrative paralysis; simultaneously, 98,619 vehicles continued operating with expired permits, with neither owners applying for renewal nor authorities initiating action.
The audit then pivots sharply to road safety risks flagging 4,99,436 vehicles running with expired fitness certificates, primarily transport vehicles, with an enormous Rs 980.15 crore in pending fees and penalties, raising serious concerns as such vehicles were still being granted permits, directly endangering public safety. Pollution compliance collapses on an even larger scale where 39,12,554 vehicles had expired PUCC certificates as of December 2023, and more alarmingly, 69,26,536 vehicles registered between 2009 and 2019 failed to renew PUCC even once in five years, pointing to near-total failure in emission monitoring.
Adding to the regulatory vacuum, vehicles were found plying without mandatory installations such as Speed Governors, High Security Registration Plates, and Vehicle Tracking Systems, while toll booth data independently confirmed widespread violations of motor vehicle laws signalling that enforcement mechanisms exist largely on paper. The audit further exposes gaps in regulating motor vehicle aggregators, where weak oversight and non-compliance with Ministry guidelines persist unchecked, amplifying risks in the rapidly growing mobility sector.
Crucially, technology which should have acted as a safeguard emerges as a weak link; delayed updates and flawed categorisation in VAHAN and SARATHI systems led to incorrect fee levies, including 79,762 duplicate driving licences charged at Rs 200 instead of Rs 400, resulting in a Rs 1.60 crore shortfall, alongside broader tax under-assessment due to misclassification. Revenue leakages extend beyond fees into unrecovered recurring taxes, while enforcement itself is diluted through deficient challans, reducing their legal effectiveness and deterrence value.
Administrative gaps worsen recovery efforts with eight out of nine RTOs lacking full-time Mamlatdars, slowing the process of recovering arrears as land revenue, and reinforcing a pattern of institutional understaffing affecting fiscal outcomes.
Finally, even citizen-facing services fail the efficiency test, as RTOs consistently breached prescribed timelines for delivering transport services, underlining that the crisis is not isolated but systemic, cutting across compliance, enforcement, technology, and service delivery. The CAG’s findings converge into one stark conclusion Gujarat’s transport governance is not just underperforming, it is structurally compromised, with financial losses, regulatory blind spots, and public safety risks feeding into one another.