CAG comes down hard on Delhi Transport Corp

The Delhi Transport Corporation, which had won plaudits during the operation of the odd-even car plying scheme, has been hammered in an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

The CAG report, which covers the financial years from 2010 to 2015, lists many irregularities in the DTC's functioning, the biggest being the loss of Rs5,022.05 crore on operations. The reason is DTC's refusal to rationalise its bus routes and inefficient route planning, according to the government auditor.

DTC was operating 574 out of 791 routes as on 31 March 2015."Comparing the earning per km (EPK) with total operating cost per km, the audit observed that not one of these routes was profitable and many of them were not recovering even the variable cost (excluding employee cost, depreciation, etc)," said the report.

"The management stated (February 2016) that the buses were allocated on a route based on its income and passenger load factor. The reply is not tenable as the corporation was not compiling any route-wise income and expenditure data," the report added.

The corporation also did not carry out a periodical review of its routes for optimising revenue, even though many of them were not recovering even the variable cost that increased from 15.24 per cent to 63.80 per cent during 2010-2015. This is despite the fact that Delhi government had ordered a route rationalisation report by DIMTS.

The transport department's decision to allow cluster buses, via DIMTS, to operate on more profitable routes in greater numbers than that agreed upon added to DTC's mounting losses.

"The audit observed that deployment of buses between DTC and cluster buses on 13 routes with comparatively higher earning per kilometre was not in accordance with agreed ratio of 50:50," the CAG report said,

The auditor found that 7.14 per cent to 28.57 per cent of trips were allocated to cluster buses in excess of the agreed share.