Although the traffic police have been recommending suspension of driving licences (DLs) of traffic rules violators, in reality only a small number of such licences have been suspended since 2012.
While 5,575 driving licences had been recommended for suspension in 2013, traffic police claim that only 736 licences had been suspended. Transport Commissioner K. Amarnarayan claimed that nearly 1,500 licences have been suspended till date, in connection with cases pertaining to 2013.
B. Dayananda, Additional Commissioner (Traffic) told The Hindu that the recommendations for suspensions were not acted upon by the Transport Department on a priority basis, until recently. He also said that there were differences in claims by the police and the transport departments. “We have taken up an exercise of reconciliation where the local traffic police and the RTO are involved,” he said.
After a recent inter-departmental meeting of the transport and city traffic police, where the police flagged the issue of backlog of suspension of driving licences recommended by city traffic police, Mr. Amarnarayan set April-end as the deadline for clearing the backlog.
Mr. Amaranarayan said that the suspension of a driving licence was a quasi judicial process and the licensee should be served a notice and be given a chance to defend himself. He said that most of them don’t turn up and this delayed the process. “Action may have been delayed, but it will be taken firmly.” he said.
