Leading-digit distribution of bills departs from Benford expectation

Benford chi-square test evaluated this work against 451 comparable sanctions in Maharashtra 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.

1. 01Benford chi-square statistic+12.7
2. 02Leading-digit 1 deficit+10.3
3. 03Round-figure bill share+7.1
4. 04Bill count in the sample+5.4
5. 05Split-bill proximity+2.6

Contributions are additive against the cohort baseline; they sum to the composite score and are recomputed whenever the underlying record changes.

1. 20 Jun 2024Work sanctioned by the District Authority₹10.86 L · Nashik Municipal Corporation
2. 20 Jun 2024First instalment released to the implementing agency₹2.87 L
3. 27 Jan 2026D-10 fired during the nightly scoring runBenford chi-square test · confidence 0.97
4. 27 Jan 2026Alert routed to Internal audit unitResponse window 30 days
5. 27 Jan 2026Closed by the reviewing deskDisposal recorded as a training label