Cops target fancy number plates,to help in surveillance

The latest drive of the Mumbai traffic police against fancy vehicle registration plates is another move towards the mega city surveillance project,which will be launched soon.

The latest drive of the Mumbai traffic police against fancy vehicle registration plates is another move towards the mega city surveillance project,which will be launched soon. The department has booked as many as 1,241 offenders by Saturday night,a day after a seven-day deadline was initiated through a public campaign.

While the penalty for the offence is Rs 500,the department is working on penalty for repeat offenders. Senior police officers said the government was in advanced stages of issuing a tender for purchasing a vehicle identification tracking system.

The drive began this month,with the traffic department using its display boards,a page on social networking site Facebook and SMS alerts to put the message across to citizens. It had put up the standard format on its website all letters should be in English and in black against a white background. It specified formats for various vehicles with spacing and font sizes — 65 mm for four-wheelers and 15 mm for two-wheelers.

Senior officers said south Mumbai was now almost entirely under surveillance,with CCTV cameras installed. Many licence plate numbers could not be identified in the camera footage as many of them are written or painted in other colours,or in other scripts.

Once the drive is completed, the CCTVs and the vehicle identification software that the government is planning to purchase will help them capture the number plates and give correct identification of the vehicle.

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