Mumbai, Oct 25 (PTI) The Maharashtra and Goa circle of the postal department has expressed willingness to deliver e-challans to traffic offenders by speed post.
The department has written a letter to the Mumbai Traffic Police as well
as the state government in this regard, an official said.
The traffic police had been sending e-challans to motorists for
violating norms through SMSes. However, this system is reportedly not
working well as e-challans are not getting delivered properly because of
frequent change in mobile phone numbers of offenders.
"Therefore, we have come forward and written to the traffic police as
well as the state government to let us deliver e-challans to their
(offenders') doorstep through our speed-post service.
"The violators can deposit challan amount in the nearest post office
through e-payment mode of the department," said H C Agrawal, Chief Post
Master General (CPMG) of the Maharashtra and Goa Circle.
But this move (delivering e-challans through speed post) will put
additional financial burden on the police department's budget.
Therefore, the traffic police alone will not be able to go ahead with
the proposal," Agrawal said.
The official suggested that to overcome the financial burden, the speed post cost could be recovered from offenders themselves.
If e-challans are printed and delivered at violators address with an
acknowledgement receipt, it will ensure offenders pay the fine and
police get their rightful revenue, he said, "this will also sending a
message to motorists to follow traffic rules." With a view to digitise
the entire process of recovering fines from road rule violators, the
Mumbai traffic police, in January this year, launched e-challan system.
It set up CCTV cameras across the city to monitor traffic violations.
Whenever a motorist broke traffic rules, his/her vehicles number was
captured on CCTV cameras.
Later, an SMS was sent about fine to be paid after obtaining the offender's mobile phone registered with the RTO.
According to figures, on an average 5,000 e-challans are issued daily in
Mumbai, mostly for over-speeding, signal jumping, not wearing helmets,
triple-riding on two wheelers, talking on phone while driving, driving
without seat belts and overstepping at zebra crossings.
PTI APM RSY .
Source : http://www.newindianexpress.com
