Audit Reports

Pondicherry

Overview

This Report contains three Compliance Audits on (i) Urban Water Supply in the Union Territory of Puducherry, (ii) Implementation of Beneficiary Led Construction component of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Urban by the Union Territory of Puducherry and (iii) Subject Specific Compliance Audit on processing of GST Refund claims and four compliance audit paragraphs.

The overall receipts and expenditure of Union Territory of Puducherry for the year 2020-21 was ` 9,325 crore and ` 9,293 crore respectively. 

We observed several deficiencies in critical areas, which had adverse impact on effective functioning of Government Departments.  Key audit findings contained in this report are as under:

Compliance Audit on Urban Water Supply in Union Territory of Puducherry revealed that Public Works Department did not prepare a comprehensive water supply plan, but has been executing the works only on demand.  The available sources of water like water bodies/lakes were not considered for augmentation of supply of water.  Even though the rain water harvesting was an effective solution for management of water problem, the same was not insisted before issuing completion certificates to the buildings.

There were instances of wastage of water without secondary use due to non-installation of sewage treatment plant.  Execution of 14 water works examined during the course of Audit revealed that all the works were suffering from avoidable delays due to deficient planning/execution.  Management of water supply suffered from non-carrying out desilting of reservoirs and non-installation of energy efficient water pumps, etc. 

There was undue benefit to a contractor who was supplying the purified water within UT of Puducherry. 

The quality of water being supplied to public was poor due to non-chlorination, non-cleaning of overhead tanks and existence of high levels of TDS/chloride, etc.  There were arrears of ` 49.44 crore of water charges to be collected from the public, but PWD was unaware of the periodicity of pendency.

(Paragraph 2.1)

Compliance Audit on Implementation of Beneficiary Led Construction component of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) – Urban by the UT of Puducherry revealed that even though 44,315 beneficiaries were found to be eligible for the scheme, the scheme was implemented only to 14,826 beneficiaries, thereby denying the scheme benefits to 29,489 beneficiaries.  Further, 16,013 beneficiaries who had applied for the other two components were not considered for grant of subsidy under the scheme.  Hence, the objective of providing houses to the houseless households within the mission period i.e., up to 2022 could not be fulfilled and denial of the scheme benefits to the targeted beneficiaries.

In respect of selection of beneficiaries, proper scrutiny of applications was not done which resulted in deletion of 2,120 beneficiaries from the approved list.  Out of the 12,706 beneficiaries finalised, 1,175 male beneficiaries who were not eligible were selected for grant of subsidy in violation of the scheme guidelines.  Eleven beneficiaries whose annual income was in excess of prescribed ceiling limit of rupees three lakh were granted subsidy in contravention to the scheme guidelines.

(Paragraph 2.2)

Subject Specific Compliance Audit on processing of GST Refund claims was conducted in respect of 96 refund cases relating to Puducherry Commissionerate.  Audit revealed instances of delay in sanction of refunds, non-sanctioning of provisional refunds pertaining to zero-rated supply, allowing double payments for a single refund sanction order and excess refund due to incorrect adoption of Input Tax Credit.

(Paragraph 3.7)

Injudicious rejection of lowest tender resulted in avoidable extra expenditure of ` 63.37 lakh on re-tendering.

(Paragraph 2.3.1)

Award of work without building plan approval and failure to hand over clear site to contractor resulted in wasteful expenditure of ` 43.08 lakh towards payment of arbitration award.

(Paragraph 2.4.1)

Idle investment due to inordinate delay in completion of housing project resulting in non-allotment of 464 dwelling units - ` 16.44 crore.

(Paragraph 2.5.1)

Non-construction of Coastal Police Station at Mahe led to blocking of funds to the tune of ` 81.86 lakh besides failure to strengthen coastal security.

(Paragraph 2.6.1)

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• Report No. 2 of 2022 - Government of the Union Territory of Puducherry
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