Chandigarh’s District Courts complex sees huge crowd for national Lok Adalat, motorists irked at lack of clarity

They also complained about the poor infrastructure at the centre.

Meanwhile, the challan collecting windows were increased to 20 when the crowd swelled by 10 am.

“The infrastructure should meet the standards of a mega event like National Lok Adalat. People were standing in the scorching sun. There was no arrangement for drinking water. I reached the district courts around 9 am to pay my fine for red light jump. It took me around 3 hours to reach the window. In the end, I was told to come again on September 12 to pay the fine,” said Amardev Singh, assistant professor with the National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR).

He said that the majority of the people who stood in queues for more than two hours were later told that their challans would not be accepted.

Temporary counters arranged for collecting the challans. (Express Photo)

Many who were fined manually through e-challan machines had also lined up for the event.

“There should be clarity well in advance from the side of traffic police about the challans that were accepted today,” remarked the assistant professor.

Another motorist, Radhika Sharma of Sector 29, who came to pay the fine for the red-light jump, demanded to increase the frequency of holding the event every second month.

“Considering the number of e-challans being issued every day through CCTV cameras in Chandigarh, holding a Lok Adalat after a gap of three months does not affect much,” she said.

A traffic police officer, who was at District Courts-43, requesting anonymity said that they have accepted over 4,000 e-challans. “The fine from half of them will be accepted today and half of them were given a September 12 date for paying the fine,” he said.

“Indeed, initially there were only five counters but as the rush increased we enhanced the counters up to 20. The challans were accepted till 12.30 pm,” the officer said.

He also dismissed the allegation that there were not sufficient arrangements to provide water for the public and said that they arranged water tankers.