Traffic police collect ₹6.50 crore fine in 50 days

₹3.37 crore fine collected in newly reported cases, say police

The Greater Chennai Traffic Police have collected fine totalling to ₹6.50 crore in the last 50 days, thanks to the new system of using call centres reminding violators to pay up.

The traffic police moved to a cashless e-challan system since March 2018. Although the compliance with payment of fines was good at the beginning, it deteriorated later as many violators did not pay the fines. The traffic police opened 10 call centres on April 11.  Subsequently, two more call centres were added for dealing with the cases registered by Anna Nagar TROZ (Traffic Regulation Observed Zone) and Centralised ANPR Camera System. 

A senior police officer said an analysis was made after 50 days of functioning of call centres from April 12 to May 31.  The staff in 12 call centres called up the violators reminding them that they had to pay the fines within a week failing which the cases would be pushed to virtual courts, the officer said. 

As a result, in the last 50 days, fines were paid by the violators in 1,27,066 cases and ₹1.93 crore was remitted by the violators towards pending fines, including in cases registered in March 2019. Drivers of 67 vehicles involved in more than 100 violations each also paid the fines. The maximum number of cases in which fines were paid for a single vehicle is 274.

As part of the same exercise, a special drive for payment of fines in drunken drive cases was launched. A total of ₹1.19 crore was collected in 1,181 cases as most of the violators were fined ₹10,000 each. Thus, a total fine of ₹3.12 crore in 1,28,247 old cases was collected. Apart from this, fines ₹3.37 crore were collected in newly reported cases. Thus, the traffic police collected a total fine of ₹6.50 crore in 2,73,284 cases in these 50 days.

The police said to boost collection of fines, the GCTP has started a bulk SMS system and is looking at other options, including payment facilitation centres and partnering with payment platforms. The traffic police called upon road users to check online if any case was pending against their vehicle and remit the fines at the earliest.