Telangana Police collects over Rs 5.5 crore in a day as it clears over 6 lakh pending traffic challans

During this period, a motorist can clear off pending bills against his two-wheeler or three-wheeler by paying only 25 percent of the total fine, whereas in the case of a light motor vehicle or heavy motor vehicle one could clear off the pending bills by paying only 50 percent. The police have also offered to clear off pushcart and petty vendors by waiving off 80 percent of the fine amount and in the case of state-run TSRTC bus drivers, a concession of 70 percent is announced.

At the end of the month, the department hopes to collect anything between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,200 crore. Most of the challans pertain to two-wheelers failing to wear a helmet or found overspeeding.

This scheme has come as a big relief for motorists across the state. As per the state police department’s statistics, pending bills for traffic violations amount to Rs 1500 crore as nearly 5 crore challans remain unpaid by citizens. Of the total pendency, Rs 800 crore is pending in Hyderabad alone.

AV Ranganath, the Joint Commissioner of Traffic in Hyderabad police, told indianexpress.com that the initiative is not focussed on revenues or targets. While most of them pertain to the last two years, some of the challans date back to 2014 when the state was formed.

On day one, despite it being a general holiday for the state’s e-Seva and mee-Seva centers, over 5 lakh challans were cleared till 6 pm. This amounts to bills worth over Rs 20 crore, leading to the government realising over Rs 5.5 crore in a matter of hours.

“The response is tremendous. People have paid up their pending challans by logging into the internet. When e-Seva and mee Seva centers open from Wednesday, we expect to clear up to 15 lakh challans a day,” he said. Over 80 percent of those who availed of the special concession on Tuesday were from the tri-commissionerate of Hyderabad, Cyberabad, and Rachakonda. In the coming days, the department expects more people in districts to make use of the offer.

Home Minister Md Mahmood Ali, in a statement on Tuesday, said that the government has taken such a decision to waive traffic challans partially after considering the hardships faced by people during the last two years of the Covid pandemic. The offer is extended to those who were issued fines for not wearing a face mask properly during the pandemic times. As against the fine amount of Rs 1000, one needs to pay up only Rs 100 now to clear their names. “We have taken this decision considering the financial difficulties faced by the poor and middle-class people due to Corona for the last two years,” the minister stated.

As anticipated, the department has recorded a heavy rush of users trying to log in to the website during peak hours. “We did enhance the technical infrastructure by up to 10 times and added features such as OTP authentication and need for the last four digits of Chassis number etc to deliberately slow down the traffic. Yet we were not able to cater to the demand. In the next few days, we will scale up the infrastructure further,” the Joint CP added.