Chandigarh: In a bid to check rising road accidents and ensure road safety in Punjab, state government has launched a a major roadmap to revamp the functioning of the Traffic Police including e-challan for the motorists, officials said. As per the officials, the online challan system is part of the 11-point agenda for 'Vision 2023-Safe Roads-Safe Punjab' launched by the Bhagwant Mann led AAP government recently.
The new move will enable motorists to pay the challans online. According to the Punjab Traffic Police, the department will undergo a revamp during 2023. Besides e-challans, the Traffic Police will also deploy 150 highway patrolling vehicles on the state highways and hire 15 road safety experts who will share their technical expertise.
Apart from this, social media and other digital mediums will be used for better coordination between people and police to ensure traffic management system. State-of-the-art technologies like smart barricades, network of 5G enabled CCTV cameras, body scanners, speed management system and e-challan system will be used for traffic management.
It is believed that a strict compliance of traffic rules will be ensured through e-challan system. According to the official data of Punjab Traffic Police, 5,79,468 non-compoundable challans were issued from 2019 to 2020 and 3,40,857 compoundable challans were issued in the state.
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In the year 2022, more than 1 lakh challans were issued in Ludhiana district alone with maximum 90,276 challans issued for lack of helmet while 36,389 challans on wrong parking, 10144 challans on defective number plates, and 244 challans on drunk driving were issued.
The e-challan is a computer generated challan, which is used by traffic police. Apart from this, e-challan system is effective for traffic violators and traffic monitoring becomes easier for the police. The government of India has integrated traffic e-challan with the web portal of the concerned department. Significantly, as per a recent report released by the Punjab Traffic Police, 13 people are killed daily on an average on the state roads with over-speeding and wrong lane driving emerging as the two major causes.
