Motorists running short of cash will soon have the option to pay their traffic challans using debit or credit cards. The facility will be available without any additional cost. The State Bank of India has agreed to provide the e-gateway for challan payments, without costing extra to the payee. The facility will be available once the traffic police's ambitious e-challan system is fully operational by next month.
The e-challan devices are equipped with the facility to swipe credit card or debit card to pay the penalty levied for traffic violations. Once operational, it will make the issuing as well as paying of the traffic challans easier and faster. Additional Commissioner of Police Anil Shukla confirmed that among many banks, SBI has been finalised to provide the e-payment gateway for the prosecutions.
Many private banks —including Axis Bank and HDFC Bank — were in the race to provide the payment gateway for the project. However, the officials said that the idea to involve private banks was shunned as they were charging additional charges for every payment.
“This could have put extra burden on the offenders, who will have to pay challans on the spot. Also, once the project becomes fully operational, the repeat offenders, who are at present treated as the first time violators will have to pay more on committing the second serious offence,” said a senior traffic police official.
According to estimates, about seven prosecutions are made per minute in Delhi. last year, over 35 lakh challans were issued generating a collection of Rs51.58 crore.
At the moment, traffic police only has the vehicle ownership details and with the process getting fully operational, data will be shared with the Transport Department, which will be fed in the central server for easy reference.
This will show up at the e-challan mini computers. Real prosecutions through e-challans are expected to start next month, after the delivery of 1,200 e-challan issuing computers is made to the traffic police by the vendor.