The Hindu : New Delhi News : Now pay traffic fine to postman at your doorstep

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 02, 2007
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

Now pay traffic fine to postman at your doorstep

Staff Reporter

More steps to cut down on manpower: Traffic Police chief

The latest system ensures almost no interaction between violators and the traffic police
The traffic police has developed a software to enable payment of “challans” at ATMs

NEW DELHI: Long queues for depositing traffic “challans” at collection centres will soon be a thing of the past in the Capital, thanks to a novel initiative by the Delhi traffic police that will send the postman to your doorstep to collect the fine.

Joining hands with the Indian Postal Department, the traffic police have introduced a system under which the postman, who earlier just delivered traffic violation notices, has been authorised to collect the “challan” amount as well.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Qamar Ahmed said all that a violator has to do is to pay the fine amount along with an additional Rs.5 as service charge through a money-order.

The violator will have to paste the counterfoil of the notice on the money-order form and retain the original copy and a receipt issued by the postman. In turn, the postman will be given some incentive for this additional task.

The initiative will also help the traffic police -- which issue 12,000 to 15,000 notices every day -- cut down substantially on manpower, which could be deployed for more important activities like traffic regulation.

That is not all. People can now also find out whether any notice is pending against their vehicle by simply sending an SMS -- “N followed by a space and the registration number of the vehicle” -- to 9811452220.

The latest system ensures almost no interaction between violators and the traffic police. The traffic violation details are gathered from various sources – like red-speed camera, traffic monitoring system, e-mail, SMS, complaint cards and helpline -- and are processed online in the traffic server installed at Teen Murti Traffic Police Lines. The processing is carried out through an indigenously developed software application that accesses ownership details from the master database, interfaces them with violation details and then prints out the notices. The traffic police also developed a software that will enable payment of “challans” at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). It is learnt the UTI Bank and the Oriental Bank of Commerce have already given their initial consent for providing such a facility through their ATMs.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi