Four years after the introduction of a law enabling the electronic monitoring of roads and highways to prevent fatalities and accidents, the government in the Supreme Court is accepting that its implementation has potholes which require mending.
One of the blind spots in the implementation of Section 136A (electronic monitoring and enforcement of road safety) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 is integral to its success and survival - to make sure that errant vehicle owners pay the traffic fines issued through e-challans.
Statistics presented before a Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Thursday showed that only a miniscule 7.61% of drivers challaned electronically have bothered to pay the fine in the last four years till March 10, 2023.
A total 3.98 crore e-challans were issued in this period in smart cities across the country. These challans were worth a total of ₹3,877.36 crore in fines for various traffic offences. However, the authorities have only been able to collect ₹295.26 crore.
The “unrealised” amount of traffic fines issued through e-challans remains a whopping ₹3,582.1 crore.
“The impact of the entire exercise of electronic monitoring and e-challans stands substantially reduced by considerably less recovery of e-challan amounts, which was in fact intended to deter vehicle owners from committing traffic rule violations,” petitioner Kishan Chand Jain has submitted.
The government seems to have geared towards action now, as per a report filed by the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety through amicus curiae Gaurav Agrawal.
The report said the Road Ministry has, in several meetings held with the apex court committee, indicated that it would take up the “exercise of standardisation and bring out detailed guidelines to integrate software and hardware with e-vahan/e-challan”.
The case before the apex court had also proposed evolving a ‘one nation-one challan system’ with a view to integrate the inter-State systems to effectively e-challan inter-State motor vehicles.
The Ministry, according to the committee report, has said it intends “to standardise national guidelines for hardware and software so that there is uniformity across the nation with regard to the modalities for implementing Section 136-A of the Motor Vehicles Act 1988”.
On Friday, the court agreed with its committee’s suggestion to ask the National Crime Records Bureau, which has a long experience in operating several federal databases and coordinating information with States, to prepare a concept paper on the modalities of implementation of a nationwide roll out of an effective and time-bound e-enforcement mechanism under Section 136A to reduce fatalities and accidents. The court asked this venture to be completed by August 7, 2023.
The Bench also gave Mr. Jain liberty to make his suggestions before the government. One of his pleas is to implement a system of auto e-challans without human intervention pursuant to feeds captured by the electronic monitoring devices.
