Leading-digit distribution of bills departs from Benford expectation
Soak pit network · Sundargarh, Odisha · sanctioned 09 Jun 2025 · detected 10 Mar 2026 (9 days ago)
Why this was flagged
Benford chi-square test evaluated this work against 503 comparable sanctions in Odisha for the same category and financial year. The distribution of leading digits across an agency's invoices departs from the Benford expectation, a marker for manufactured figures. The residual for this record falls outside the learned tolerance, and the contribution breakdown below isolates which measured features carried the score.
- 01Benford chi-square statistic+18.6
- 02Leading-digit 1 deficit+16.0
- 03Round-figure bill share+12.0
- 04Bill count in the sample+8.6
- 05Split-bill proximity+2.9
Contributions are additive against the cohort baseline; they sum to the composite score and are recomputed whenever the underlying record changes.
Evidence
| Chi-square statistic | 30.5 |
| Bills in sample | 155 |
| Sanctioned | Rs 22.40 L |
| Released | Rs 9.34 L |
| Expenditure | Rs 5.59 L |
| Physical progress | 100% |
Record trail
- 09 Jun 2025Work sanctioned by the District Authority₹22.40 L · Sundargarh Jal Nigam Division
- 09 Jun 2025First instalment released to the implementing agency₹4.67 L
- 10 Mar 2026D-10 fired during the nightly scoring runBenford chi-square test · confidence 0.73
- 10 Mar 2026Alert routed to Internal audit unitResponse window 30 days
The work
Detector
First-digit anomaly in bill values
The distribution of leading digits across an agency's invoices departs from the Benford expectation, a marker for manufactured figures.