In the reply furnished for a query under the Right to Information Act, the State police headquarters said that the Chennai police had collected a total of Rs 66.31 crore as fine amount from traffic violators in 2020 while the collection was Rs 33.39 crore in 2019.

The collection of fines has been steadily going up in the last five years. In 2016, the amount collected as fine from motorists stood at Rs 24.13 crore, which went up to Rs 25.58 crore in 2017. It increased further to Rs 27.83 crore in 2018 and then to Rs 33.39 crore in 2019, said the RTI reply given to Mohammed Ghouse, an activist from Pattabiram.

The fine collection for traffic violations across the State, too, recorded a steep rise of 31.66 per cent, or Rs 52.51 crore, in 2020. While the traffic fine collection in Tamil Nadu in 2019 was Rs 165.81 crore, the amount went up to Rs 218.32 crore last year.

In the State, the traffic fine collection has been increasing since 2016 – except in 2018. It was Rs 101.43 crore in 2016, which went up by more than 50 per cent to Rs 155.60 crore in 2017. It went down to Rs 118.18 crore in 2018 but went up again in 2019 to Rs 165.81 crore, the State police headquarters added in the RTI reply.