During the performance audit, the Indian controller and the general auditor (CAG) came across something curious about the state government and the administrative storage of wages for the keral database (Spark); In more than 12,000 current records of government employees, the year of their birth or the year of joining the service was awarded as 1900.
In some cases, the records have shown that employees of birth in 80 were joined in 1900. In others it was the opposite; Employees of birth in 1900 were shown that they joined service in 1983 and 2006!
It is one of the errors and discrepancies in Spark, an integrated information system that manages data on employees in the Kerala government that CAG has identified the performance of the Integrated Financial Management (IFMS) (IFMS) (925) financial system (925).
“At 12 801 records, it was recorded that the year of birth or annual connection date was in 1900,” CAG said. The report includes a table with illustrative cases. The government also brought an answer (November 2024) that the instructions were issued to lock all records of each employee in the spark “after verifying the same data available in the employee’s book before sanctioning their addition”.
The report mentions 78 records where the date of birth of the employee was the same as the date of connection to the government service. In 89 records, the date of birth was later than the date of connection to the service. In 231 cases, the difference between the date of birth and the date of connection was less than 18 years, indicating that the employees concerned join the service before they were 18 years old.
Errors in employees’ numbers
CAG also indicated errors in the allocation of permanent employees (PEN) for employees. The system assigns the pen when registering an employee. From now on, a six -digit pen serves as a unique code to identify this employee in the Spark database. However, CAG’s audit revealed that at least in some cases more pen was assigned to the same individual.
And that’s not all. “The audit analysis has shown that out of 8,28,063 employees records 2 72 076 (33%) records contains an unsolicited value in the permanent account number (PAN) or containing details of the pelvis.
Same PF number
Another analysis of the data showed that in 228 cases under 30 departments were generated wages for the processing of salary for employees who either left the service or died. CAG also labeled 13 409 records with the same general fund (Kerala) (GPF) number, except for records with invalid GPF numbers.
CAG emphasized the need for “verification checks” in the system to ensure consistency and accuracy of data.
Published – 11 October 2025 05:29
