Delegation of Financial Powers Rules 2024 — Rule 13, Write-Off of Losses and Vehicle Condemnation

1. The Four Pre-Conditions Before Any Write-Off (Government of India’s Decision 1)

Before a Subordinate Authority can exercise its write-off power, four conditions must all be satisfied:

• The loss must not disclose a defect in rules or procedure that would require the amendment orders of a higher authority or the Finance Ministry.
• There must be no serious negligence on the part of any Government servant that would call for disciplinary action by a higher authority.
• Before deciding to write off, the Administrative Ministry/Department must conduct a thorough and searching investigation, and apply the lessons learned to prevent recurrence.
• A quarterly statement of write-offs must be submitted to the Integrated Finance Division, indicating the reasons, nature of loss, and remedial measures taken.

A write-off is not a bureaucratic shortcut for avoiding paperwork on a small loss — it is a formal acknowledgment, subject to Financial Adviser oversight, that the loss cannot reasonably be recovered and does not reflect an unaddressed systemic or disciplinary failure.

2. Monetary Limits for Writing Off Losses

The Government of India’s Decision under Rule 13 prescribes the following monetary ceilings for writing off irrecoverable losses:

Additionally, the Department of Revenue may further re-delegate write-off powers for loss of revenue to its own officials, other Departments may re-delegate up to ₹5,000 per case of revenue loss to Heads of Department, and irrecoverable losses of stores or public money (and deficiencies/depreciation in stores value) may be delegated to a Head of Department by written order, subject to that delegation not exceeding 10% of the Department’s own power.

3. How “Value” and “Each Case” Are Interpreted

Two interpretive rules matter here. First, the value of stores for write-off purposes is the book value where priced accounts are maintained, and the replacement value in other cases. Second, “each case” is reckoned with reference to the total value of stores written off on one occasion — not item by item. This closes an important loophole: an officer cannot split a large loss arising from a single incident (say, a fire or theft) into smaller amounts written off separately on different dates purely to stay under their delegated ceiling. Losses from one specific cause — fire, theft, flood — must be written off together, at one time; there is no bar, however, on writing off losses from genuinely different causes together in a single sitting.

4. Condemnation of Motor Vehicles and Motorcycles

DFPR 2024 gives Departments full power to condemn vehicles once they meet either an age or a distance-run criterion, whichever is reached earlier:

A vehicle may only be condemned after obtaining a certificate confirming it is unfit for further economical use, from an Electrical and Mechanical Workshop of the (erstwhile) National Airport Authority, a State Road Transport Corporation workshop, or, where neither is available, a Central or State Government Transport Workshop. Ministries/Departments have full power to scrap vehicles that have reached 15 years of age, but only through a Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facility (RVSF) established under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways guidelines. Condemned vehicles must be disposed of within three months of placing a fresh order for replacement, per the Ministry of Finance DoE O.M. dated 01.04.2024.

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