Visakhapatnam: The e-challan system of the city traffic police has failed to create fear among errant motorists in Vizag and is instead indirectly helping the postal department in earning revenue through delivering the traffic e-challans to motorists. Though the cops have been issuing traffic e-challans for various traffic violations, only 15-20 per cent of errant motorists are coming forward to pay the fines.
However, the flip side of the police is that the cops are yet to develop a mechanism to fish out pending e-challans on the spot and to collect fines for all the issued traffic e-challans. The records of the city’s traffic police wing show that nearly 80 per cent of the vehicles owners do not take e-challan seriously.
City police chief T. Yoganand said they have found in their analysis that only 18-20 per cent of traffic e-challans were being compounded (where the offenders pay the fine) and in most cases, the fine is not paid. “We have issued about 16,800 traffic e-challans in 2016, but only 2,816 motorists (19 per cent) have paid the fine to the tune of Rs 2.91 lakh. As much as 80 per cent of the motorists, who received the e-challans, ignored it,” he added.
Similarly, the Vizag Rural police also issued over 500 traffic e-challans in Anakapalle and Narsipatnam towns, but they received fines from only 60 persons. “It is very difficult to trace vehicle owners as they might have changed their address and the vehicle registration database maintained by the Road Transport Authority is not up to date,” said a senior police officer with traffic police wing.
“We are yet to get Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) machines, which can crack pending challans with just an entry of the vehicle number during routine drives. We are paying more amount (Rs 30 for a challan) to the postal department through e-challans, than we are receiving as payments,” he pointed out. DGP N. Sambasiva Rao said the e-challan system would be modernised all over the state with extensive use of technology, manpower and infrastructure.
