With new digital machines, traffic police in Ggm begin issuing challans to erring drivers

Gurugram: After a brief hiatus, Gurugram traffic police have become strict in their vigil and have begun issuing challans on a large number of vehicles. In just three days, 1500 challans have been issued to the erring drivers. Penalising a large number of vehicles comes at the backdrop of the traffic police acquiring 115 digital machines. Co-incidentally the process of procurement was delayed for several months. All this is being done under the amended motor vehicle act of 2019 that has increased the number of fines.

On average, over 700 fines are being levied on a daily basis. Most of the offenders are breaking the red light signal followed by driving on the wrong side, overspeeding and not wearing the seat belts.

"Our main objective is to ensure that the roads in Gurugram are safe and for this, our men are on the ground that there is proper order. For long, our personnel were complaining of working with old machines. Now with the coming of new machines, the functioning will be more comfortable and transparent," said a senior police official from Gurugram traffic police.

Gurugram made headlines when a large number of fines were enforced when the amended Motor Vehicle Act came into effect from September 1. What started off with a scooter driver being charged with the fine of Rs 23,000 ended with a truck driver being challaned a whopping sum of Rs 59,000. From September 1 to September 4, the Gurugram traffic police had penalised over 2000 vehicles and collected Rs 12 lakhs in amount.

The Gurugram police have conducted initiatives where a large amount of challaning is done on erring drivers. In data that was revealed by the Gurugram traffic police, only 340,460 vehicles were challaned from January to March.

In 2017, the Gurugram traffic police collected Rs 11 crores total amount through fines. This record was broken in the six months of 2018 itself with the law enforcement officials collecting Rs 15 crores from the period of January to August.

"I hope the strict approach taken by the traffic police is beneficial in instilling proper traffic sense among the residents. Being stationed in prominent areas will result in the police getting hold of a large number of people; however the main culprits which are the trucks, autos and private buses get away maybe because of their clout," said Amardeep Singh.