New e-challan application poses a technological hurdle for traffic cops

NOIDA: Traffic police personnel are finding it difficult to use the e-challan application on mobile phones given to them to penalise violators on the road.
Only 200 challans have been issued using the mobile application since Tuesday, when traffic police personnel were handed the phones. The policemen using the cellphones said they were finding it difficult to upload pictures, switch on the GPS and note down details of vehicles and their drivers.

Senior officers agreed only five of them — mostly the younger lot — could use the application without reporting any problem. Over 150 mobile phones had been over to traffic police officers last week to issue challans online.

Noida has around 50 head constables (promoted), 14 head constables, two traffic sub-inspectors and two inspectors who are authorised to issue e-challans. Although two sessions have been held to train these police personnel, they are yet to make much headway in getting themselves acquainted with the application.

“I agree it is taking time. Some people forget to switch on the GPS location, others cannot use the touch keypad and some face problem typing in English,” one of the traffic police officers using the app told TOI.

On Saturday and Sunday, a few head constables could be seen issuing manual challans, unable to cope with the mobile application.

The mobile application can issue two type of challans — contact and non-contact challans. While contact challans only need issuing officer to enter registration number of a vehicle and driving licence number, non-contact challans, which are issued in cases where the driver flees, need uploading of photographs.

The department is now planning to issue printouts of numbers that will indicate the traffic violation. The printouts will be given to the personnel handling the application and they will have to just enter the number indicating the violation instead of writing down the entire case.

An index with the numbers will be pasted at the back of each phone. “A printout of the numbers can be pasted on the back of these mobile phones. Another training session will be held for officers handling the application,” SP (traffic) Anil Jha said.