Hyderabad city traffic police have gone hitech in the matter of collection of fines from the violators. The department has been equipped with e-challan system replacing the age-old manual system. Under the new system, the traffic policemen equipped with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) will be able to collect the fine from the violators of traffic rules electronically. No problem, if a violators does not have cash on him. He can always swap his credit or debit card to pay the fine.
The new integrated electronic-challan system was formally inaugurated by the State Director General of Police V Dinesh Reddy. These new generation hand-held devices will be directly linked to the central server and if a cop on the road is collecting fine from a violator, it will be automatically updated on the central servers.
“It will bring a total transparency to the entire system of fine collection,” said CV Ananad, the suave head of the Hyderabad traffic police. “The new electronic system was introduced in view of the complaints of irregularities in collection of fine”.
Earlier there were allegations that the traffic cops were pocketing the money by issuing fake receipts of the fine.
As the traffic violations on the congested roads of Hyderabad are rampant and collection of fines is a huge operation for the traffic police, the new electronic system was expected to bring a lot more improvement in the situation.
According to the official data, the Hyderabad traffic police had registered a record 1.1 million cases of traffic violations in 2011, highest in its history and collected a fine of Rs11 million. “Since then the cases of violations has started showing a decline due to the intense monitoring and stiff penalties,” said a senior official of the department.
The new device, which can be used by a cop only after he enters his user name and password will be loaded with all the information about the driving licences and the vehicle owner. The data can be accessed merely by entering the registration number of a vehicle. The device was also equipped with the geographic information system (GPS-GIS).
Traffic police officials said that new integrated system will be helpful to the road users as earlier they had to go to a Government service centre or the traffic police control room to pay their fine. “Now they can do it on the spot to the cops who are equipped with the PDAs,” they said.
Apart from the PDAs, the Hyderabad traffic police are now also equipped with five laser speed guns, 10 tint meters to ensure that the vehicles have transparent glass windows, 50 breath analysers to curb drunken driving and 175 digital meters.