Aiming to control the indiscriminate use of stickers on motor vehicles, the Greater Chennai Traffic Police (GCTP) have started checking and imposing fines on vehicles with unauthorised stickers from Thursday morning.
Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic, R. Sudhakar said, “The Motor Vehicles Act and rules thereunder do not allow the use of defective number plates. Our personnel began taking action against the violators and imposing fines.”
The GCTP said the display of department identities in the form of stickers or any symbol/marks in a private vehicle or in its number plate can have wide-ranging negative impact on the individual as well as the concerned departments. Mostly, the name of the departments or institutions such as Press, Secretariat, TNEB (electricity board), GCC (Chennai Corporation), Defence, Police, etc., can be seen on private vehicles in Chennai city.
Revealing such government affiliation in private vehicles could compromise operating efficiency and safety. Also, it may lead to misuse of the department’s reputation and also deviate officers and police personnel during their field duty, the GCTP said.
In addition to this, there are also many private vehicles found to have symbols, logos or emblems of a political party, or with ‘doctor’ or ‘advocate’ stickers Sometimes the motorists also affix unauthorised stickers on the number plates of their vehicles. Even Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras in 16 junctions cannot detect the number plates of those vehicles when stickers are fixed on it, said a senior police officer.
Setting a deadline to desist from the practice of using unauthorised stickers, the GCTP warned the road users against these practices and provided a time period till May 1, to correct and rectify.
From May 2 onwards, strict action is being taken against the violators by booking cases under Section 198 of Motor Vehicle Act, 1988 (Unauthorised interference with motor vehicle) and Central Motor Vehicles Rule 50 - Section 177 of MV Act (defective number plate).
The senior police officer said, “We focused on vehicles with stickers of ‘Police’ and ‘Defence’ or defective number plates. The violator of rules is fined ₹500 for the first time. The traffic officers also warned of imposing a fine of ₹1,500 if repeated again. As many as 427 cases were booked and challan issued to the violators, including police personnel”.
