In an intensive checking drive of commercial vehicles in the Union Territory of Chandigarh, the State Transport Authority (STA) checked more than 3,200 transport vehicles and challaned/impounded a total of 909 vehicles in the month of September.
The drive was conducted by the STA — aiming to curb the tendency of plying unauthorised with incomplete documents — driving overload vehicles and make the city pollution free.
During the inspection drive, a total of 715 vehicles including tourist buses, school buses, trucks, auto passengers, auto load, taxis, tractors, driving schools among others were challaned while 194 vehicles were impounded.
By compounding the challans, Rs 12.80 lakh was recovered as composition fee by the STA.
The challaned vehicles included 433 diesel run autos, 97 lTV/MTV, 96 trucks, 40 school buses, 20 taxies, 14 tourist buses, three driving schools, seven CC buses, one CTU bus etc. Apart from this, 127 auto diesel, 19lTV/MTV, 35 trucks, four tractor trolleys, five e-rickshaws among others were impounded.
The STA has advised the people to keep the documents complete in their vehicles i.e. RC, insurance, driving license, pollution under control certificate and permit and not to overload their vehicles while traveling so that they may not face unnecessary inconvenience.
The STA Secretary, Satish Kumar Jain said the STA has started the special drive to challan/impound diesel auto rickshaws which are coming from Punjab or Haryana to Chandigarh and do not have valid documents
Jain said that a move for checking driving schools and pollution check centers have been started for good quality of driving and to make City Beautiful a smoke free city.
In its checking drive of commercial vehicles, the STA had in August impounded/ challaned 526 vehicles collecting Rs 10.20 lakh composition fee. The STA collected composition fee of Rs 9.98 lakh, Rs 7.49 lakh, Rs 8.80 lakh, Rs 8.32 lakh in respective months of July, June, May and April.
During its drives in the previous months, the STA impounded/challaned 496 vehicles in July, 307 vehicles in June, 323 vehicles in May and 370 vehicles in the month of April.