india

Updated: Sep 06, 2019 11:41 IST

Traffic police in Haryana and Odisha alone have issued over 4,400 challans and fined violators of traffic rules Rs 1.4 crore since the new penalties came into effect from Sunday under the amended Motor Vehicles Act, according to Union road transport and highways ministry data.

In Haryana, 343 challans were issued and Rs 52,32,650 collected until September 5. As many as 4,080 challans were issued in Odisha, where 46 vehicles were seized and Rs 88,90,107 collected until September 4.

As many as 63 clauses of the newly-amended law pertaining to heftier penalties for traffic violations came into effect from September 1.

On the first day in New Delhi, 39,000 drivers were fined for various offences, including violations like triple riding, tampered number plates, and pressure horns.

According to the ministry, a total of 3121 challans have been issued by the Uttar Pradesh transport department so far, 1499 challans in Chandigarh and 1400 challans issued in Jharkhand till September 4.

On Monday, a man in Gurugram was fined Rs 23,000 for riding a motorcycle without wearing a helmet and also for not carrying important documents.

In Odisha’s Bhubaneswar on Wednesday, an auto-rickshaw driver was slapped Rs 47,500 fine for driving without a valid permit, licence and registration.

“The challans are expected to go up over the next couple of days as many people are still getting to know about the new rules and then hopefully it will suddenly go down as the compliance increases, that is what we have observed with other countries. Slowly, we are seeing people have started carrying all their vehicle documents, in certain places of Delhi like Burari we observed this. It is going to be an inverted curve where the challans would eventually drop after a week or ten days as compliance with the norms increases,” Piyush Tewari, founder of SaveLife Foundation (SLF).

Amid criticism over the new penalty rates, Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday underlined that the Centre will not roll them back. “A time should come that no one gets penalised and follows traffic rules. These high provisions penalties are to encourage adherence to traffic laws,” Gadkari told reporters. He added there is no plan to raise the limit on the fines.

Nearly 1.5 lakh people die in road accidents in India on an average daily. India is a signatory to the United Nation’s Brasilia Declaration with the target of reducing road fatalities by 50% by 2020.

States like Congress-ruled Rajasthan, Madha Pradesh, and Punjab have also expressed reluctance in notifying the new rules. The Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Gujarat, too, has said that the new fines were not “feasible”.

“States have no choice but to adopt the new law. They are now working for the notification for compounding offences,” a transport ministry official said on condition of anonymity.