Mumbai: Rs 100 cr fine yet to be collected from motorists

Traffic police which had received flak for its inability to recover pending fines for traffic violations for the last two years have seen great improvement in collection of fines this year. As per the department's claims, this year the recovery rate has increased to 125 per cent per day as compared to last year. Still, the pending fine amount is around Rs 100 crore.

Speaking to DNA, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Amitesh Kumar said, "The e-challan system was fully operational in 2017 and 2018. Before that, we used to collect fines manually. Since the CCTVs are linked with the e-challan system, we saw an increase in the number of cases registered. However, there has been pendency of recovery of fines from the offenders due to the implementation of the e-challan system."

He added, the manual fine collecting system used to result in police-public conflict and raised allegations of corruption among traffic police. It also led to less manpower in regulating traffic with policemen being put on fine collecting duty. The e-challan system was introduced to overcome all these issues.

"Last year we used to collect Rs 8 lakh fines per day, which has now increased to Rs 18 lakh per day. Till February this year, Rs 141 crore fine was unpaid, the number has now come down to Rs 100 crore. Due to awareness created by traffic police, citizens are now paying fine amount online," said Kumar.