According to a media report, The Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) is pressing forward with the modern e-challan system. Last year, the police caught around 2 million traffic violations on cameras and issued electronic challans to the violators. These e-challans added 192.73 million to the national exchequer.
Punjab Police 1
Law-breakers 0
PSCA is making a killing with the new Automatic Vehicle Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras to identify traffic violations. Here’s the drill: the ANPR cameras, installed across different roads of Punjab, capture the license plate of the traffic violator’s car. The system pastes the camera shot on a challan paper with other details of the violation and sends it to the car owner’s home. The convict then pays the challan through e-banking, mobile banking, ATM service, Easypaisa service, or by physically visiting a bank.
During the last two years, the Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) has issued over 4.4 million e-challans and collected 339 million rupees worth of payments. Out of these 4.4 million traffic rules violators, around 2 million and 75 thousand were vehicle owners, 2.2 million and 90 thousand were motorcyclists, and over 85 thousand were commercial vehicles.
Rawalpindi Joins The E-Challan Club
The Rawalpindi City Traffic Police (CTP) department has recently launched the e-challan system in the city. Rawalpindi is one of the main cities of Punjab. The introduction of e-challans in the city will ensure vehicular discipline on the roads and add more e-challan payments to the national exchequer.
Happy traffic police is one side of the picture; the other side shows unhappy citizens. Many have called this e-challan system flawed and even signed petitions against it. One of these petitions even caught the attention of the Lahore High Court. Justice Shams Mahmood Mirza from the LHC challenged the electronic challan system.
Do you think the e-challan system is for the better? Who do you stand with? The Traffic Police or the public?
