Bhubaneswar, April 20: The Odisha government is losing crores of rupees in revenue because of inefficient and irregular realisation of motor vehicle taxes and fees.

In 2010-11, the government was able to achieve its motor vehicle tax target by collecting Rs 730.12 crore against a target of Rs 725 crore, but it failed to achieve its Rs 870 crore target in 2011-12 and was only able to collect Rs 791.20 crore. Tax collection in 2012-13 (till January this year) was Rs 631.87 crore.

The number of motor vehicle offences in 2010-11 was 1,07,116 while it was 1,07,965 in 2011-12. Till January this year, the number of offences was 86,058.

The CAG attributed a number of reasons for the loss of revenue. The department checked the records of 32 units involved in assessment and collection of taxes on motor vehicles and found non or short realisation of taxes, fees penalty involving Rs 86.54 crores in 1,70,927 cases.

During test check of the data base and selective cross check of records by the CAG into the general registration register, permit register, permit case record, off road register of the regional transport officers (RTOs) between May 2011 and March 2012, the CAG noticed that motor vehicle tax and additional tax from 37,278 vehicles for different periods between March and 2010 and March 2011 were not realised.

Apart from motor vehicle tax, an additional tax of Rs 80.98 crore including penalty of Rs 53.99 crore are yet to be collected. Though fitness and testing fees are to be collected from transport-category vehicles including omnibuses (vehicles with seating capacity more than seven excluding the driver), it was noticed that 690 omnibuses were registered under private category instead of transport category and testing fees were not collected from time to time since March 2007.