JOIN USBBMP to ramp up crackdown on mask offenders in Bengaluru's South zone
Rampant flouting of mask wearing and social distancing regulations have prompted the special officer in the city’s South zone to increase the number of violators that each BBMP marshal must catch.
In a notice issued on October 25, Munish Moudgil, Special Officer for South zone wrote that: “BBMP marshals have been allotted a target of booking a minimum of twenty offenders in each assembly constituency per day in the South zone.”
This new target is an increase from the 15 violators that each Marshal is already obligated to catch per day as mandated by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BMMP). There is one marshal per ward in the city. Already, the South zone has a reputation for catching the highest number of violators per day in the city. According to official data on October 18, for example, its marshals registered some 14.95 fines per ward.
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“It is not enough,” Moudgil told DH. “Violations of the regulations across all wards are rampant. Outside every restaurant and eatery, people are causing an uproar.”
“Ideally, I would like to increase the target to 100 violators per Marshal per day, which could help bring the scale of violations under control. The objective of increasing the target is not to generate more fines, but to serve as a deterrent to social distancing violations,” he added.
The BBMP data shows that while collections were matching existing targets in several assembly constituencies, others were lagging badly behind. In Vijayanagar constituency, for example, the number of violators caught were among the lowest, averaging nine per ward.
The move to increase daily targets comes after marshalls failed to achieve “the given daily targets in booking the offenders...in spite of repeated instructions,” the notice stated.
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The notice also added that any “failure to at least 20 cases per day per marshal will lead to action on South Zone Marshal Supervisor and concerned division supervisors under the Disaster Management Act 2005 for deliberate failure to take action to control Covid-19 without any further notice.”
Moudgil explained that repeated failures to meet targets could result in FIRs being registered.