Ranchi traffic police personnel will act sturdy on drunk driving cases, rash driving on December 31 and January 1. The checking drive is already going on at all the major locations. Along with this the traffic police personnel will also control unruly auto rickshaw drivers who are plying their autos in the State capital without the permits, cleared insurance papers, driving licence, pollution certificates and fitness papers.
“We have four breathe analyzers for checking drunk and drive cases. The department has also planned to form special teams and team members will be deployed at all major entry and exit points to deal with such cases. As per the regulation, person held in drunk and drive cases is directly prosecuted,” informed Traffic SP, Manoj Ratan Choute.
On the other hand from Tuesday, traffic police personnel will again initiate the checking drive to check the unruly auto drivers. After the recent decision of Jharkhand High Court, the traffic police personnel are conducting checking drives at all the major locations in the city.
“We have started the checking drive with the intention to systematically manage the traffic in the state capital. Presently, we are arresting only auto drivers without permits and are also ensuring that they must have a pollution certificates with them. There are several cases of fake auto rickshaw drivers registered with the department,” said Traffic DSP Dilip Khalkho.
However, the traffic police do not have any proper measures to check the pollution mechanism. “We are not entitled to check the pollution, whatever documents we receive are fully verified by the population control board or by any authorized private agency like Jharkhand Motor Fitness Centre,” said Choute.
Traffic police had earlier launched drive and campaign to make public aware about the basic norms and rules of traffic but the efforts of traffic police seems to be useless.
“Earlier, too we had launched awareness campaign like ‘Parivartan’ but it does not had much impact on the masses, now its high time and we are now enforcing rules more strictly according to the Motor Vehicle Act. The department is fining Rs. 5000, which is the highest fine for plying auto rickshaw without permit according to the act,” added Choute.
Even the Motor Fitness Centre authorities believe that during the checking drive, there is a sudden rise of auto rickshaw drivers for getting the pollution certificates verified.
“On regular days we do not find any auto rickshaw drivers. But recently we have given pollution clearance to more than 30 auto rickshaws as the traffic police campaign is going. We have gas analyzer and smoke metre for checking petrol and diesel vehicles respectively. Only those vehicles are issued pollution under control certificates which fulfills all the criteria,” said Rajendra Prasad of Jharkhand Motor Fitness Centre.