According to recent data acquired from the Mumbai Traffic Police, it has come to light that only 11 per cent violators have cleared their e-challans, while the rest who were found flouting the rules in the first month of this year are yet to pay up the fines. According to the data, as many as 4.92 lakh e-challans were issued to the violators in Mumbai in January, of which only 53,338 have paid.
The Mumbai Traffic Police have devised a number of plans to collect the fines. They have collected over 23 percent and aim to collect at least 60 per cent by the end of this year. According to the collective data recorded last year, of the e-challans issued worth over ₹105 crore for various violations, more than 78 per cent, valued almost ₹83 crore are yet to be collected from the violators. The data revealed that of the total 3,460 e-challans worth ₹6.92 lakh were issued for overtaking, only ₹91,200 has been recovered from the motorists, while the remaining amount continues to be pending.
While the MTP strives to improve the e-challan recovery rate, the Highway State Police (Maharashtra) too is in a similar fix with low recovery rate. An official said the highway police had issued over 1.57 lakh e-challans to violators of which only 19,259 have paid the fines.
In a bid to ramp up the recovery of e-challan payments, Maharashtra Traffic Police has now begun collecting fines in cash as well. Police said that the efforts are underway to collect over 1.64 crore unpaid challans worth ₹602 crore, of which over 40 per cent unpaid challans belong to Mumbai. Police claim that due to digital payments the recovery was badly affected, but since the cash payments has been restarted, the recovery rate has slightly gone up.