Published On : Mon, Oct 1st, 2018

Cops mop up Rs 14.92 crore fine through e-challans, courtesy the postman

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Nagpur: City cops who cracked down on traffic violators and issued lakhs of e-challans mopped up a moolah to the tune of over Rs 14 crore towards fines in the past two years. Interestingly, the Postal Department came handy for the cops in achieving the feat as it delivered over 4 lakh e-challans to the traffic violators.

A total of 4.37 lakh e-challans were delivered through Speed Post between November 2016 and August 31, 2018. Out of 4.37 lakh e-challans, 4.11 lakh traffic violators remitted a fine of Rs 14.92 crore in the coffers of Nagpur police. The Postal Department started delivering e-challans for the Nagpur Police in the first such partnership in India where e-challans are generated by the traffic police and sent by speed post to traffic violators.

The traffic violators can also deposit the challan amount in the post office. They can transfer it to the traffic police via e-payment system,” H C Agrawal, Chief Post Master General, Maharashtra Circle, said. Agrawal said that the purpose of the partnership is not simply to collect penalty amounts, but to assist the police in ensuring that motorists follow rules.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic), said, “While the system is working well in the city, the police are incurring cost in operating it and will soon switch to a completely digital system of delivery. Due to challans being posted, compliance has increased but not 100 per cent. We are gathering data of offenders who are yet to pay fines and putting together a database. We will send challans digitally and expect compliance to increase,” he said.

Apart from Nagpur, the partnership between the Postal and police departments is also expected to become active in Pune. The current system of procuring addresses and phone number of traffic violators from the RTO and sending SMS alerts has its limitations. There are occasions when the address of the driver has changed and the phone number may either not be updated or gone out of service.

Agrawal further said that the partnership with the Mumbai Police, which began sending e-challans from October 2016 after the completion of the first phase of the Mumbai City Surveillance Project, is yet to be finalised. Earlier this year, the Postal Department had offered to deliver e-challans to violators.