Coming in June: One state one e-challan

MUMBAI: An ambitious traffic laws’ enforcement project, “one state one e-challan” – which seeks to integrate the e-challan system across the state - is likely to be operationalised next month. As part of the proposed scheme, the traffic police will be able to serve offenders uniform e-challans, irrespective of the district or city where the violation occurred. The traffic police headquarters will be the hub from where the e-challan updates will be controlled.

In order to be armed with e-challan machines, the traffic police has ordered 4,500 handheld devices, which will provide details of any pending e-challans that might be registered in the name of the vehicle.

Amitesh Kumar, joint commissioner of police (traffic) said, “The tender is in the final stages of being passed, and by mid-June, everything should fall into place. Moreover, keeping the positivity going, it will definitely come into force by the end of June.”

“This new e-challan system will bring transparency as well as bring down the instances of conflict between constables and violators. This system also intends to lessen the manpower required for charging traffic violators,” he said.

The project is expected to be rolled out before the end of June, and will be set up in five separate cities of Maharashtra in the first phase of the project. The cities that are included in the first phase are Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur. During the first phase, the main hub of traffic control will be set up in Mumbai’s traffic headquarters in Worli. However, the state centralised operations headquarters will be later set up in the state highway police’s office in Mumbai as part of the second phase of the project, which will include all cities in the state.