Fed up paying fines on old vehicles? Help at hand soon

If you are still receiving echallans for traffic offences involving a vehicle that you no longer own, don’t worry, help is at hand. Soon, the police will themselves help you transfer the ownership and avoid future penalty notices.

The Hyderabad traffic police is coming up with a dedicated platform to accept complaints from people who are the receiving end of wrongly-directed notices, bring the old and new owners of vehicles seized and help them complete the registration transfer process.

Police is working to finalise a system that will accept such complaints over phone and email as well as WhatsApp and SMS. Hyderabad traffic DCP A.V. Ranganath said that the traffic police would establish a new database of vehicles whose ownership has not been transferred to the current owner and are still running on the previous owners’ names.

“This problem is leading to e-challans and prosecution notices being sent to wrong persons. Now, when we receive such complaints, we will upload the same on our servers, which are integrated with the Personal Digital Assistants with field-level staff. They can identify such vehicles on the spot and act.”

“Our team will immediately seize the vehicle. Then, at the police station level, we will communicate with both the old and current owners of the vehicle and initiate the process to transfer its ownership”, Mr. Ranganath said. “If the new owners have all the documents, including Form-29 of Road Transport Authority, in such cases, there is no need to disturb the old owners.”

The whole process of receiving complaints from people, routing the information on seized vehicles by SMS, uploading it onto police servers, etc., will all be automated through a web-based software platform, he said.

So far, the traffic wings of the three Commissionerates have been generating e-challans based on vehicle registration number and sending it to the addresses registered with the RTA. In the new system, the police will include full details, including Aadhaar number and address of the current owner of the vehicle, to update the database. The police expect the system to be operational from the first week of July.