Easing the burden on trial courts: Soon, pay your traffic fines online in Mohali

Akshit filed the PIL, through advocate Kanav Goyal, at the beginning of this year, highlighting difficulties faced by violators who, despite the surge in e-challans following the 2019 amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act, must still appear physically in courts or offices to pay their fines. It pointed out that the national portal, already functional in Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh, allows petty offenders to plead guilty and pay fines online.

“Punjab’s delay is inexplicable when the state has already invested heavily in CCTV infrastructure,” the petitioner argued, calling for the system to be extended across the state to reduce judicial backlogs.

In an affidavit filed in July, the Punjab Transport Commissioner stated that Mohali had been chosen for the first phase of the project owing to its extensive CCTV network. “The state is committed to expanding the facility statewide after a successful pilot,” the commissioner said.

The court, however, noted in August that approval from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) was still pending, and directed it to file a compliance affidavit.

On Monday, the NIC, represented by counsel Dheeraj Jain, told the high court that “the e-challan application has so far been enabled only for Mohali, based on a limited request from the Punjab Transport Department”. However, the NIC clarified, “If the department seeks to extend the facility to other districts, NIC can do so within about two weeks of receiving the request.”

On the virtual court application, the NIC said that so far, it has received a request only for traffic challan integration. “A trial version of the Virtual Court Traffic (Punjab) was shared with the high court in June 2024, and the court’s technical team is still testing it. Under the standard process, once the high court completes its testing, it must send a User Acceptance Test (UAT) report to the Supreme Court’s e-Committee. The e-Committee will then approve and issue directions to the NIC for making the module live.”

The NIC told the bench that upon receiving such directions, it would take about three weeks to fully enable the virtual court system for traffic challans in Punjab.

The NIC also gave an assurance that the e-Challan application would be promptly expanded to other districts whenever the Punjab government issues instructions.

The bench made it clear that the pilot in Mohali must begin first, before being expanded across Punjab.

Listing the case for November 19, the bench gave the state and the NIC a window to demonstrate progress.

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