Noida traffice police to send postcards of e-challans to violators

The move is expected to reduce expenses on postal fines and would help intimate more violators. As of now, owners of only those vehicles that have been registered after April 2017 receive text messages on the Vahan application.

The Noida traffic police is collaborating with National Informatics Centre (NIC) and India Post to start sending postcards of e-challans to traffic rule violators.

The fine is sent to violators via courier and that costs about ₹40 per person. Switching to general post would reduce the cost to ₹6. The postcards, however, will cost 50 paise each.(HT Photo)

The move is expected to reduce expenses on postal fines and would help intimate more violators. As of now, owners of only those vehicles that have been registered after April 2017 receive text messages on the Vahan application.

“There are often delays, owing to the cost involved, in sending fines via courier. The postcards will help reduce our cost and will also help us intimate more people. The postcards have been designed in a fine format and will be printed as soon as the fine is generated,” Anil Kumar Jha, superintendent of police (traffic), said.

He added that the draft format of the postcard has been sent to NIC and India Post and discussions are on to finalise it. Once it is approved, the department will try to automate the process so that postcards for all e-challans are generated as soon as the person is penalised.

Since the e-challans system was started in April this year, the traffic police has issued 5,44,177 e-challans. However, a constant problem was that violators were not intimated about being penalised. Officials said that of the total e-challans issued, fewer than 40% of the vehicle owners received text messages alerting them about the penalty.

The fine is sent to violators via courier and that costs about ₹40 per person. Switching to general post would reduce the cost to ₹6. The postcards, however, will cost 50 paise each.

Officials said using courier services, the department would have to spend about ₹2.16 crore for sending postal fines to 5.4 lakh violators. However, using postcards, the total cost would come down to ₹2.70 lakh — to a mere 1% of the current cost of using courier services.

“This will be a small price that can easily accommodated in our budget. We will also be able to get corporate groups to take care of this cost under their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives for road safety and traffic management,” Jha said.