‘Traffic violations in 2020 more than 2019’

MUMBAI: Despite being under complete lockdown for over six months, the city had witnessed more number of traffic violations last year as compared to 2019.

According to the Mumbai traffic police data, in 2020, 5,095,478 drivers had received challans for various traffic -related violations compared to the 4,938,485 violations in 2019. The traffic police had imposed penalties worth ₹148.16 crore, of which 953,679 fines worth ₹25.73 crore had been recovered, while 4,141,799 challans worth ₹122.43 crore have remained unpaid last year, the data revealed. In 2019, there were unpaid challans worth ₹102 crore.

Traffic police officers said after the lockdown restrictions were eased, the department had to ensure smooth flow of traffic, especially of emergency vehicles and government vehicles. Thus, they increased patrolling and nakabandis across the city and could nab more traffic violators.

Additional commissioner of police (traffic) Pravin Padwal said that the department had in January and February also noticed a rise in the number of violations, even before the city went into lockdown.

“We had ensured more action in 2020,” said Padwal, adding that after the lockdown was eased in September, there was increase in challans as more action was taken.

Traffic police officers said that there was a backlog of 29 lakh unpaid fines on e-challans issued, amounting to ₹315 crore. To recover the pending e-challans, the call centre started by the traffic police on December 7

Keeping city's roads safe

contacted around 4,600 motorists and managed to recover ₹1.12 crore-fines from 2,596 violators.

Yashasvi Yadav, joint commissioner of police (traffic), said they would continue with the call centre until all the pending challans are recovered.

The officers said that to clear the backlog of pending challans they had urged the motorists to pay their dues but did not get response. A mobile application was also set up to make it easy for the violators to pay their fines but that was also not working.

The traffic police had also requested the regional transport department to cancel the driving licences of 2,000 motorists who failed to pay their pending e-challans.