Soon,traffic offenders will get e-challans

The project,which was to be implemented in 2012,was awaiting digitised data of vehicular registration from the Regional Transport Offices (RTOs). They have now provided the data for the last 10 years,and have been updating the information of 500 vehicles on an average daily,said an official with the RTO department.

“The data feed is integrated between the RTO and traffic police headquarters. When an offender is caught,the constable will key in the required details in the hand-held device,which will be scanned across complete data feed for a match. The RTO gave us this data recently,and we have taken the help of technical experts to integrate the system,” said a traffic police official.

The device will print the receipt,and update the records following a fresh offence in real-time,added an official.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Brijesh Singh said,“Earlier,traffic personnel used to write traffic violation on challan booklets and a give a copy of the record to the driver. Now,the challans would be typed and printed at the point of offence. It will also help police officers to record the licence number,registration number and other details of a vehicle involved in a traffic violation,and feed it directly to the database.”

Singh added,“Every possible information of the vehicle will be flashed on the e-challan device’s screen at the touch of a button. It will not be difficult to find out if a particular vehicle was involved any other violation.”

The idea of e-challan was first floated in 2006,but remained mostly on paper due to paucity of funds and difficulties in system integration,said Singh. In the last five years,many police commissionerates across south India such as Chennai,Hyderabad and Bangalore have effectively implemented this new system.

The Mumbai traffic police had initially acquired equipment commonly known as Point of Sale (POS) devices,but personnel who used it at the training stage gave the feedback that the screen was not visible in the dark,said an official. The units were returned and fresh one sought,which have now been received.

During the pilot project,the POS devices will be tested after a brief training,and a report sought.

megha.sood@expressindia.com