File FIR over missing database records: CAG

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 28

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has called for an FIR over the missing records in the e-procurement database of the Haryana Government.

The CAG submitted its report in this regard in the state Assembly on Tuesday.

This e-procurement system was introduced in May 2014 and the contract was given to M/s Nextenders India Private Limited up to May 2019 at a price of Rs 295.50 per bid.

As on January 2018, 99 government departments or boards and corporations were registered with this portal.

During the audit of the e-procurement system, it was observed that each table of the database contained a field named “ID” which is a system-generated number assigned to each record in the tables. The analysis of the database revealed that in the 29 tables, 91.35 lakh entries (IDs) were missing.

Further, two different data dumps — up to July 31, 2017 and January 28, 2018 — were provided to the CAG. The comparative analysis of the two dumps revealed that 1.16 lakh entries appearing in the earlier dump were deleted and were not found in the later one.

“The missing records between the first dump and second dump clearly indicate that the Database Administrator (DBA) had interfered with the database from the backend and the integrity of the system was compromised,” said the CAG report.

Citing examples, the CAG said that 13.52 lakh entries are missing which contained values submitted by suppliers in technical bids and commercial documents uploaded.

The missing values of technical bids may affect the evaluation of technical bids.

As many as 1.79 lakh entries pertaining to information about bidders registered for an auction event were missing.

Also, 27,921 entries containing information about the personnel authorised to open each tender were found missing. So, it cannot be ascertained whether the authorised user had opened the tender.

On 8,852 missing entries on the fee amount submitted, the CAG said that now, it is not possible to ascertain the payment status in the missing records and if successful payments were credited to the appropriate account.

The CAG observed that security audit of the e-procurement system wasnever got conducted by Director, Supplies and Disposals, Haryana.