The Madras High Court has said it expects senior officers to conduct surprise checks on the working of Motor Vehicle Inspectors (MVIs.) If they are not performing their duty, action should be taken against them.
The First Bench of Chief Justice S.K. Kaul and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan was disposing of a petition by K. Suresh, who sought a directive to the Transport Commissioner, among others, to consider his representation and direct them to act against overloading of vehicles and officials who allegedly connived at it.
The petitioner’s grievance was that an October 2013 circular of the Transport Department was not being implemented in Kancheepuram district. This led to overloading of vehicles, affecting residents.
The Bench said the administration involved both formulation of policies and their implementation. “The High Court does not have a mechanism to keep a day-to-day check on violations, and it is the bounden duty of the administration to do so.”
To the government’s submission that there were MVIs who were supposed to do the checking, the Bench said that to check their performance, there were senior officers, who, in turn, were required to move out of their offices and monitor the MVIs. The Bench said the result of the surprise checks after the allegations were looked into should be communicated to the petitioner within a month. A compliance report should also be filed in the court in six weeks.
