Jaipur: Rajasthan’s road-safety planning has been based on accident data that may not capture the full scale of crashes in the state, with medical and health department recording more than three times the accident cases recorded by police department, Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found.In its Performance Audit of the Road Safety System in Rajasthan till March 2025, CAG compared accident records maintained by different departments and found a sharp divergence in the numbers.While police department recorded 1,59,215 accident cases between 2018-19 and 2024-25, medical and health department recorded 4,84,457 cases involving road accident victims transported by ambulances and admitted to hospitals during the same period.The discrepancy is significant because police accident data has been used for preparing Rajasthan’s Road Safety Action Plans, as well as the Road Safety Road Map-2020. The same data was adopted by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).CAG said the mismatch and possible underreporting in police records undermined the accuracy of road-safety planning and stressed the need for a comprehensive and reliable accident database.The audit found another discrepancy when police records were compared with Integrated Road Accident Database (iRAD). For 2021-22 to 2024-25, police records showed 94,563 accidents, while iRAD showed 96,672 accidents recorded by police department.The state govt acknowledged the difference and told CAG that police records capture only those accident cases in which an FIR has been registered. It pointed out that some victims go directly to private hospitals for treatment and that these hospitals may not be integrated with iRAD.According to govt, the gap could be addressed by integrating iRAD with police department’s Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) and medical and health department’s Treatment Management System.CAG’s findings raise concerns over whether the state’s accident database provides a complete basis for identifying accident-prone locations and deciding where road-safety interventions are required.A substantial difference between police records and hospital-linked data means that accidents not resulting in an FIR could remain outside the data used for planning.
