Online challan to tighten screw on traffic violators
2 min readPatna: Life is going to be tough for repeat offenders of traffic rules and rash drivers in Bihar.
The transport department will introduce a system of keeping history-sheets of their offences to help initiate harsher action against them from April this year.
State-of-the art handheld devices, tabs, printers and other gadgets are being bought to initiate an online challan system through which fine tickets will not only be handed over immediately to traffic rule violators, their offences will be recorded and integrated with state and central transport agencies.
“The biggest benefit of the system we are going to introduce at the beginning of the new financial year is that a history of challans in Bihar will be kept, which means all traffic offences will be recorded. History sheets of offenders will be kept,” said state transport secretary Sanjay Kumar Agarwal.
Agarwal added that having history sheets of offenders will help impose increasing penalty if they regularly indulge in same kind of offences.
The transport department’s initiative comes on the heels of all district transport offices going online and 15-year-old data related to vehicles integrated with state and central government agencies.
The new system will also help traffic enforcement agencies zero in on repeat or habitual offenders. Such a system is already functional in Delhi and a couple of states. “Our officers and also those of the police will be able to find how many offences or cases of violation of traffic rules and regulations are against a particular person. Offenders should feel that he or she is on our radar,” Agarwal said.
Integration of data with central government servers will also help get details about offenders from other states coming to Bihar or in transit through it to other parts of the country. To bring transparency in the new system, text messages will be sent to the violator’s cellphone once he gets a challan receipt.
A government source said foul play has always been suspected in the present manual challan system that is manned by police and transport department officials.
“On many occasions, officials take more money than the amount mentioned on the challan. Also, there are possibilities of fake challan receipts being handed over to an offender and the amount realised as fine being embezzled by the officials,” the source said.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
