Traffic police recover ₹11.36 crore in fines through Lok Adalat

Mumbai The Mumbai Traffic Police managed to recover total fine of ₹11

Mumbai The Mumbai Traffic Police managed to recover total fine of ₹11.36 crore from 13.33 lakh errant motorists during the latest Lok Adalat held on Saturday.

Mumbai, India - March 18, 2022: Police officials check motorists for rule violations during a Nakabandi on the occasion of Holi festival at Juhu, in Mumbai, India, on Friday, March 18, 2022. (Photo by Vijay Bate/HT Photo) (HT PHOTO)

According to the traffic officials, the fear of having to appear before the Lok Adalat, saw 2,11,758 pending e-challans being settled till Saturday. In the last 15 days, traffic police officials had sent pre-litigation notices to 13.33 lakh motorists with 72.72 lakh cases against them.

The fines accruing from these e-challans comes to a total of ₹338, 24, 28,500 out of which only 2.11 lakhs challans were paid bringing in recovery amount of ₹11,36,67,400.

“The response is slow, but in the five Lok Adalats held in the past year, pre-litigations notices have resulted in recovery of ₹420 crore e-challans, making the recovery rate 50 per cent of the total pending e-challans. Since 2016, the amount due from pending e-challans amounts to ₹978 crores,” said a traffic police officer.

Rajwardhan Sinha, joint commissioner of police (Traffic) said that Lok Adalats are reassuring since the recovery of fines is considerably good, but the entire process leading to the recovery is comparatively slow.

Sinha further said that the entire exercise of recovering fines is primarily to instill discipline among errant motorists which would in turn result in better traffic conditions within the city, and indirectly help in containing fatalities that one sees on the roads.

The state highway police in September last year had approached the Lok Adalat by serving pre-litigation notices through a text message to motorists whose dues were pending for several days. From September to March this year, traffic police across Maharashtra served pre-litigation notices to owners of more than one crore vehicles that had violated traffic rules.

After the Bombay high court directed the traffic police in March 2021 to approach Lok Adalat to recover pending e-challan dues, the traffic police started serving pre-litigation notices asking them to pay up or be present before the Lok Adalat to pay up the dues.

The motorists are sent a text message which contains a link to download the notice which is in the form of a PDF file. The vehicle owners who do not turn up before the Lok Adalat face prosecution by court which means the fine amount goes up.