Mumbai:
In a bid to check corruption, Mumbai police will soon implement e-challan wherein traffic police constables and officers will be able to only issue e-receipts to traffic violators and not collect fine money from them, the Bombay High Court was told today.
Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria told the court that e-challan pilot project will start in a month and the entire project will roll out after three to four months.
"On the lines of Bangalore and Hyderabad, Mumbai traffic police will also start the e-challan system. We have tied up with the State Bank of India. Hand-held gadgets will be provided to traffic constables and officers who are on the streets on which if any traffic violator is stopped only a receipt can be issued to him or her. The fine amount will have to be paid online," Commissioner Maria said.
"We want to do away with the cash collection system at the ground level. The e-challan system will have cashless transactions," the police chief told a division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice AK Menon.
Commissioner Maria was submitting the traffic police's presentation to the high court on how it plans to tackle traffic woes in the city. The high court had sought the presentation during hearing in a public interest litigation filed by Bombay Bar Association seeking strict implementation of traffic rules and regulations.
The Regional Transport Office (RTO) today told the court that while it has already shared with the traffic police the digitised database of vehicles registered in the city post 2006, the process of digitisation of data of vehicles registered prior to 2006 is on.
"We direct the transport authority to complete the process of digitisation and share the database with the traffic police by December 2015," the court said.
Commissioner Maria added that the traffic department has also started a drive of enforcement against its own officers and constables.
"Since a month, we have started a drive where we see if any policeman is breaching traffic rules, the erring personnel will be counselled for a week," he said.
The police chief added that the state government has sanctioned setting up of 6000 CCTV cameras across the city.
"As of today, the traffic police has 229 CCTVs. But these are not of high quality and are not enforcement cameras. The cameras we have will not help in capturing a vehicle's license plate number. But the new CCTVs that will be provided by the government are of high quality,", the Mumbai police chief said.