Noida: Believe it or not, the Noida
traffic police has been able to earn a whopping Rs 3.28 crore by issuing over 5 lakh challans for different violations to motorists from January to November last year. This was despite fewer number of vehicles being seen on the roads of Gautam Budh Nagar during the
lockdown.
While the revenue collection is lower than 2019 when 6,99,708 challans were issued and Rs 14.76 crore was collected from
violators, the numbers for 2020 are higher than 2018 when Rs 2.77 crore was collected via 5,70,908 challans. As per traffic
police data, the maximum number of challans (1,36,272) were issued for not wearing helmets followed by parking in “no parking” zone (1,29,184), wrong-side driving (72,464), driving without seatbelts (37,209), red light jumping (22,347), vehicle without or with faulty number plates (16,362), driving without license (14,298) and speeding (12,015).
Traffic inspector Ashutosh Singh said the numbers include e-challans issued by the traffic department across Gautam Budh Nagar using mobile phones and a part of the automated challans issued at the Jewar toll for speeding on the Yamuna expressway and those captured by the highway traffic management system on the Noida-Greater Noida expressway.
“The challans issued by the automated e-challan system come in bulk, so those issued for the expressways would take some time to collate. The data includes the challans issued at least till July. The entire number of challans will be collated by the end of January,” he said.
While the state government had revised the
challan rates last year, in September this year too, hefty fines were introduced for motorists in Uttar Pradesh riding two-wheelers without helmets and four-wheelers without seat belts among others.
DCP (traffic) Ganesh Saha said the reduction in the number of challans for speeding was because of the heavy penalty that is now being slapped for the offense.He added that the Noida traffic police will also start issuing challans for those using number plates displaying their castes like “Brahmins” and “Gujjars”.