Mumbai: Eight months after the Mumbai traffic department’s pilot e-challan project was put in place to collect fines from errant drivers, figures till June show only 32 per cent motorists accused of violations as having paid up. The number of detections by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras has risen to five lakh cases per month.
The figures show a marginal increase when compared to corresponding figures got till April. Figures till April show that 25 per cent of violators paid up while detections by CCTV cameras were around four lakh per month. Traffic police has said that if the increase is persistent over the next few months, the pilot project, which was started off for 18 months, will be considered permanent.
Officials in the Mumbai police traffic department have said that looking at recent hikes in recovery of fines through the e-challan system, it will be proposed before the state government to make the project permanent. Motorists too have lauded the system as they not only get an e-challan on their registered mobile phone number, documents and the vehicle are not seized as they used to be under the earlier system of manual fines.
Amitesh Kumar, joint commissioner of police (traffic), told The Asian Age, “The pilot will end in the month of December this year, and we will send the proposal after a month. It will be considered to be permanent only after it is reviewed by the government and a decision is taken.”
“As the department tried to give violators the liberty to retain their documents and only cough up a fine, they apparently took advantage of the facility. But looking at the low recovery rate, the department has decided to impound the documents and return once the fine is paid,” said Mr Kumar.
Around 5,200 CCTV cameras have been installed all over the city which are collectively worth Rs 850 crore. Video grabs of the offence are attached to the email sent to offenders and they can also be accessed over MTP’s mobile application.
