Audit Reports
Tamil Nadu
Government of Tamil Nadu Report No. 4 of 2022- IT Audit of STAR 2.0 Application in the Registration Department, Tamil Nadu
Overview
Overview
I General
The primary function of the Registration Department (Department) is to register documents. The project STAR 2.0 Application (online registration activities) was sanctioned in November 2012 at a cost of ` 117.34 crore and was awarded to M/s Tata Consultancy Services (2013) with a target to Go-Live by November 2014. However, the department announced ‘Go-Live’ of the STAR 2.0 project on 12 February 2018. Further, the project cost was enhanced (October 2019) to ` 215.32 crore due to deployment of additional data entry operators and help desk operators.
[ Paragraph 1.1 ]
II Planning and Implementation of STAR 2.0 Application
The Department had not developed interface for verification of Identity Cards, which is the primary attribute to ensure that the document registered is not disputable, thereby exposing the department to fraudulent registration of documents through impersonation. Audit analysis revealed that the PAN, Aadhaar details & Driving licences in respect of 1,55,726 cases were found incorrect.
[ Paragraph 2.2.1 ]
Incomplete Special Deputy Collector (Stamps) Segment and Public Works Department Segment of Document Registration Module led to incomplete data capturing of Value of the document and the Demand, Collection and Remittances of Stamp Duty/Registration Fee. Also, same payment receipts (referred by transaction ID) were used against Stamp Duty/Registration Fee charges of more than one document besides non fulfilment of objective of seamless flow of citizen’s service.
[ Paragraphs 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 ]
Inefficient system for matching patta details wherein, 18,378 ‘invalid survey number’ responses received from the Revenue Department were linked to documents registered. Thus, the system allows completion of document registration despite mismatches in patta details leading to registration of disputable documents.
[ Paragraph 2.2.5 ]
Out of 16,00,145 requests sent for transfer of ownership of property, in 1,24,304 cases, the requests were returned with ‘Null’ and ‘Failed’ status with responses such as Government lands, Land under Anadheenam, blocked for transaction etc., The department did not take any corrective action in respect of the above cases, wherein the risk of fraudulent registration of Government land is high.
[ Paragraph 2.2.6 ]
Absence of classifications and deficiencies in data capturing in respect of various types of deeds/documents would result in short levy of duty, fees and adoption of manual procedure besides incomplete data capture.
[ Paragraph 2.2.8 ]
While issuing Certified copy of a document, Audit noticed that the personal data/information relating to parties of a specific document, viz, fingerprints, facial photo, photo ID cards (Aadhaar, PAN, etc.) were also shared with any third party.
[ Paragraph 2.3.1 ]
Audit noticed in one District Registrar office that 531 volumes were fully damaged, and 1,784 volumes were partially damaged.Further, 32 photo volumes were fully damaged, and 91 photo volumes were partially damaged.Non-availability of these documents for inspection/issuance of certified copies would hamper customer service delivery envisaged by the department.
[ Paragraph 2.3.4 ]
During data analysis, audit noticed 192 support requests relating to EC generation were pending for more than 30 days. These requests were raised on issues such as missing document number, error in survey number, change in SR office jurisdiction, non-reflection of court attachment, etc.
[ Paragraph 2.4 ]
III Application Development
A user has to compulsorily select the survey number of the land parcel that has to be registered and if not available, the user is allowed to enter any value for the survey number by choosing ‘Others’ option and continue with the registration process. This leads to registration of any parcel of land despite non-availability of survey numbers in the application. Audit undertook a comparative study of survey number of 10,811 documents in one village which revealed that 832 documents had invalid survey numbers and 308 records had survey numbers categorized as ‘Government land’ in that village.
[ Paragraph 3.2(a) ]
Audit noticed that there were 16,777 documents without identity proofs of executants/claimants, 38,878 documents without contact number and 59,423 documents without email ID.
[ Paragraph 3.3.1 ]
Audit noticed capturing of poor quality of thumb impressions and facial images which do not commensurate with the standards prescribed.
[ Paragraphs 3.3.3 & 3.3.4 ]
Audit noticed that the application allowed initiation of multiple transactions from a single document by linking any of the previous documents of a property, though the previous documents are to be archived and used only for reference and verification of lineage of transaction/document.
[ Paragraph 3.4.2 ]
Audit noticed that security testing in respect of nine modules was last conducted during 2018 but no security testing was conducted thereafter. Further, release notes listing 371 enhancements / error fixations had been furnished by the SI during the period from January 2019 to July 2019 without security testing.
[ Paragraph 3.5.1(c) ]
Audit analysis of Account ‘A’ table of registration database revealed reuse of challans in 864 cases. Further, the application allows modification of status of the receipts as ‘inactive’ even after return of the document, thereby bringing them available for re-use or for claiming refund.
[ Paragraph 3.7.1 ]
Audit observed that the application did not have a reconciliation functionality. As per the office of the Accountant General (A&E), Tamil Nadu that there is a credit difference of
` 1,175 crore (as on 31 January 2020) between the State Books and Central Accounts Section of RBI, Nagpur. Further the department did not reconcile the online receipt figures with that of AG(A&E), Tamil Nadu from April 2019.
[ Paragraph 3.7.4 ]
IV Resource Management and Controls
Audit verification of the status of data migration revealed that 99.98 per cent of records out of six crore records relating to Index II register of STAR was successfully migrated by the department and 37 per cent of records pertaining to pre-computerisation period were yet to be uploaded and integrated with the new application. Further Account details, viz, Accounts ‘A’ to ‘H’ prior to February 2018 were not migrated into STAR 2.0.
[ Paragraph 4.1 ]
Audit noticed that 11 out of 58 MIS reports are yet to be developed and the reporting module enabled generation of MIS only after office hours. Further, the MIS report on surcharge can be downloaded only for the selected month and not on quarterly basis.
[ Paragraph 4.4 ]
Audit noticed that the SR screen could be accessed by various methods, viz, recovering previous SR login history, use of function keys, etc. and concurrent SR login in multiple systems were also noticed.
[ Paragraph 4.5 ]