According to a data shared by the state transport commissioner, traffic e-challan fines of more than INR 700 crore are unpaid across Maharashtra till date. Out of this, traffic violators in Mumbai owe the traffic police almost INR 280 crore, which is close to 40 per cent of
Since last month, RTO made the fine system 100 per cent electronic. To rigorously implement the e-challan system, 50 RTOs across the state have now been entrusted with the task of identifying habitual offenders or those delaying payments with the assistance of traffic and state highway police.
The transport department plans to prepare a standard operating procedure for fine recovery in the next few days. The violators who fail to clear the pending fines will be reported by the Mumbai Traffic Police and their licences will be suspended for three to six months, and in serious cases, it could also be revoked.
Simultaneously, the state government is considering increasing fines under the newly amended Motor Vehicle Act.
However, it is not an easy task to zero in on the offenders. In many cases, the driver who committed the offence is not identified. The notices are usually served to the vehicle owner and in some cases, the addresses are not proper or the mobile number given is incorrect. The database is not updated and hence a lot of time and efforts is spent on finding offenders and to recover the fines.
Offenders have to pay the e-challan fine within 15 days. From the 16th day onwards, a penalty of Rs 10 per day is imposed for the delay in payment. This penalty can go up to Rs 1,000, said officials.
In case of unpaid fines for long durations, traffic police send the data to the RTO concerned for licence suspension. As per the latest data, most of the offenders in the state were private car or two-wheeler owners and maximum violations recorded were those of jumping signals, speeding and illegal parking. Sources said that only one-third of the violators had paid the penalties.
E-Challans - How people manage to evade these?
E-challans are transparent — the motorist knows the offence for which they are being booked and the penalty due. Traffic police are empowered to only register the offence, while the device generates the corresponding fine, eliminating any scope for discretion. Offenders can appeal against the challan issued but they have to pay the fine first. There are still some who evade fines by providing false information on their vehicle, address, etc. The system must be strengthened to plug these gaps.
While the e-challan system has been available in Mumbai since 2016-17, when the traffic police first started issuing violation slips digitally, a more refined version of the system became available across the state from January 2019. Motorists can now pay their e-challan fine from any smartphone or computer using wallets, credit/ debit cards or even through net banking.
In a bid to recover the pending e-challans, the Mumbai Traffic Police had used different methods like using the postal service or collecting fines during random checks, only to fall back on the manual crackdown.
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