Mumbai traffic cops will now collect fines in cash

In a bid to recover the pending e-challans, the Mumbai traffic police on Tuesday, December 8, decided to collect the fines from all the traffic rules violators in cash.

According to reports, the efforts are underway to collect over 1.64 crore unpaid challans worth ₹602 crore, of which over 40 per cent unpaid challans belong to Mumbai.

Since the last four years, RTO made the fine system 100 per cent electronic for making the fine collecting process smoother. However, the police claimed that due to digital payments the recovery was badly affected. The violator was penalised an e-challan by the system and was sent to them, but they failed to make the payment, resulting in a long dues of pending e-challans, said officials.

Moreover, a similar cashless approach was adopted across Maharashtra as a part of digitising the method and cutting down corruption. Then one state one e-challan came into existence and the e-challan system was integrated.

Last year, looking at the low recovery rate, Thane had gone back to the traditional way of collecting fines in cash. Meanwhile, Pune is still in the process of going back to the traditional way, said an official.

However, Mumbai police, later, started collecting fine through credit or debit cards. Traffic police reported that most drivers were unaware of e-banking, online financial transactions and the recovery rate still witnessed a downfall.

Justifying the traditional way, the police stated that in the last two days, since the cash payments has been restarted, the recovery rate has slightly gone up.

The reports also stated that the traffic police have collected more than 30 per cent extra than what it used to collect, with an instant increase of 40 percent in recovery rate.

According to reports, if a motorist is caught violating rules, he will now be issued an e-challan and cash payments will be accepted. If the violator does not have cash at the moment, they can either make an online payment or pay via credit/debit card.

According to a recent data collated by the Maharashtra Traffic Police, the violators are yet to shell out ₹602.32 crore for over 1.64 crore unpaid challans.