A recent performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has uncovered significant anomalies within the Kerala government’s Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala (SPARK) database. What caught the auditor’s eye was the curious presence of the year ‘1900’ appearing in more than 12,000 current employee records, either as their birth year or their service joining year.
The findings ranged from the absurd to the illogical: some records indicated employees born in the 1980s had started their service in 1900, while others showed individuals supposedly born in 1900 joining service in modern times like 1983 or 2006. These glaring inconsistencies are just a few of the many errors flagged in the CAG’s performance audit report (Report No. 4 of 2025) on Kerala’s Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), which was presented to the State Legislative Assembly on October 9, 2025.
The report explicitly states, "In 12,801 records, it was noticed that the year of birth or the year of the date of joining is 1900." This audit report includes a detailed table of such illustrative cases. In response, the government indicated in November 2024 that directives had been issued to lock all employee records in SPARK after thorough verification against their physical service books, specifically before approving increments.
Further scrutiny revealed more chronological blunders: 78 records showed an employee’s date of birth as identical to their date of joining government service. In another 89 instances, the date of birth was listed *after* their date of joining. Perhaps most concerning were 231 cases where the age difference between the birth date and joining date was less than 18 years, implying these individuals began their government careers underage.
Flawed Employee Identifiers
The CAG also highlighted significant issues with the Permanent Employee Numbers (PEN) system. Intended as a unique six-digit identifier for each employee upon registration in SPARK, the audit found that some individuals were assigned multiple PENs, undermining the very purpose of a unique identification system.
The problems didn’t stop there. "The audit analysis of the data showed that out of 8,28,063 employee records, 2,72,076 (33%) records contain junk value in Permanent Account Number (PAN) field or did not contain the details of PAN. The audit also noticed duplicate PAN values in 6,374 records," the report revealed.
Provident Fund Discrepancies
An additional data analysis exposed that payrolls were still being generated for 228 employees across 30 departments who had either left service or passed away. Moreover, the audit identified 13,409 records sharing identical General Provident Fund (Kerala) [GPF] numbers, alongside numerous other records containing invalid GPF numbers.
In light of these findings, the CAG has strongly emphasized the critical need for robust "validation checks" within the SPARK system to ensure the accuracy and consistency of employee data, which is fundamental for effective financial management and governance.