The introduction of the online payment facility for traffic offences will also come in handy for buyers of used vehicles as they can now check the vehicle’s history of violations and outstanding fines.
The city police have joined hands with the Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services (EDCS), which is under the Department of e-Governance, to extend the online payment facility for traffic violation fines.
Several gullible purchasers in the city have been forced to cough up the outstanding penalties against traffic offences committed by the previous owners, who had ignored the notices posted to them by the police. “Now, purchasers of used vehicles can log on to the KarnatakaOne portal (www.karnatakaone.gov.in) and check for outstanding penalty against a particular vehicle by keying in the vehicle registration number,” said Sandesh Kumar, inspector of Devaraja traffic police station.
As it is, if an errant vehicle owner chooses to ignore the notice issued by the traffic police and sell the vehicle, the purchaser will inherit the liability. Few buyers take the trouble of checking the history of offences and outstanding penalty by contacting the traffic police. The history of violations will be available either with the Traffic Automation Enforcement Centre in the City Police Commissioner’s office or with traffic policemen possessing Blackberry handsets. Even if the vehicle registration card shows that the vehicle was in the previous owner’s possession at the time of offence, the new owner needs to pay up.
The facility to check for the record of penalties against a vehicle is already available in most other cities, including Bengaluru.
The number of cases booked by the traffic police has increased several folds over the last five years with the police booking cases not only through physical checking but also after accounting for footage from CCTV cameras and digital cameras provided to traffic police constables and interceptors. In 2011, there were 1.82 lakh traffic offences. This rose to 11.5 lakh in 2015, police sources said.
