NEW DELHI: Truck drivers and fleet owners shell out around Rs 48,000 crore annually as bribes to traffic or highway police, besides personnel from the transport and tax departments, according to a study carried out across 10 major transport and transit hubs. Even local groups like “puja samitis” extort from truckers before allowing them to cross informal checkposts, with one-fourth of drivers paying cash to them.The study by SaveLife Foundation , a not-for-profit entity, claimed that over 82% respondents had admitted to having bribed “officials of one or the other department on the road” during their last trip, revealing the rampant corruption in the sector. The survey findings are based on detailed interviews of 1,217 truck drivers and 110 fleet owners.Overall, the amount paid as bribe for every trip to various authorities was estimated at Rs 1,257.The report released by junior minister for road transport V K Singh claimed that at an all-India level, two-thirds (67%) of the drivers admitted to having bribed traffic or highway police personnel on the road.Among the select transport hubs, Guwahati had the worst indicator where 97.5% of drivers claimed that they had paid bribes, followed by Chennai (89%) and Delhi (84.4%).For truckers, bribing RTO officials was also found be an unwritten norm, with nearly 44% respondents at all these hubs confirming the same. In Bengaluru, their share was 94%, followed by 93.4% in Guwahati. The report has also cited examples of how government officials deployed on the roads devised mechanisms, such as issuing special slips to drivers after collecting the bribe amount. They just needed to show the slip at the next checkpost for smooth passage.The report has exposed how a large share of drivers (47%) admitted to having paid bribes for renewal of their driving licences. The maximum, nearly 93%, of the respondents from Mumbai claimed that they had to pay a bribe for this, followed by Guwahati (83%) and nearly 78% respondents from Delhi-NCR made similar claims. While on an average a driver paid Rs 1,789 for renewal of licence, in Delhi the bribe amount was the maximum at Rs 2,025.Even 43% of the fleet owners claimed to have paid bribes (average of Rs 1,360) to the transport department for registration of their vehicles.Admitting how paying bribes has become synonymous with the trucking business, Singh said when they used to put checkposts to count the number of vehicles for assessment, every truck driver would show a currency note through the window. “They always thought these to be the checkposts of transport departments. We had to tell them not to worry,” he said.