A Bengaluru traffic police official issuing a challan to a biker.
Credit: DH File Photo
The Karnataka police have issued 57.99 lakh e-challans to traffic violators across eight cities of the state from January 1 till the end of July this year. The state is, however, lagging in the collection of fines. So far, only Rs 29.22 crore of the Rs 303 crore due has been collected. Of the 57.99 lakh violations, the police are yet to receive fines in over 54 lakh cases.
According to police sources, the state has issued the highest number of e-challans in the country. Karnataka has been issuing e-challans to traffic violators since 2017.
Within the state, the Bengaluru traffic police have issued the highest number of e-challans (about 50 lakh) followed by Mysuru (4.8 lakh) and Hubballi-Dharwad (1.7 lakh). The remaining five cities — Belagavi, Mangaluru, Davangere, Shivamogga and Tumakuru — have issued less than one lakh e-challans each.
Police officials say they have intensified issuing of e-challans over the last five months as the move has increased transparency in the system. Whenever there is a traffic violation, a traffic constable clicks the picture of the vehicle and uploads it to a server. This, in turn, generates a traffic violation ticket against the owner of the vehicle. Traffic police can collect fines on the spot with the help of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) machines. The department has procured additional 2,473 PDAs to be distributed among all police stations in the state.
"Currently, e-challans are being issued only in eight cities. By the end of September, all police station limits in the state will be provided with PDA machines to issue these e-challans," said Alok Kumar, additional director general of police, traffic and road safety."
"There is a delay in payment of dues by violators. To prevent this, the police intend to bring in a mechanism where the violators pay fines on the spot and the fine paid is directly transferred to the government treasury," Kumar said.