Pramesh S Jain & Yogesh K Porwar
I
n a special drive carried from past one month the East,West, North and South Division traffic police booked over 1 lakh cases against erring motorists violating traffic rules .
Even though the traffic police termed this as special drive,random vehicle checks and flagging off vehicles at every nook and corner of the city roads is back after a lull of two years .
According to the official release issued by East division traffic,as many as thousands of motorists have been booked for various violations including jumping traffic signal,riding against one way,footpath riding,riding without helmets,triple riding and using mobile phone while riding are the major offences committed by two wheeler riders across the city .
The police have collected a total whopping lakhs of fine amount from the offenders and warned them to take legal action if they found repeating the offence, Kuldeep Kumar Jain, DCP, traffic,East Division, said .
The special drive was carried often to reduce traffic violations and instill discipline among the motorists which is on the rise,for the last one year.This is also led to increase fatal accident rates,Mr. Jain added.
It may be recalled that the physical checks and random checking of vehicles was stopped since June 2022 based on the direction of the then DG-IGP,Praveen Sood.
The decision was taken following a series of harassment complaint and corruption among the traffic policemen which according to a senior police officer dented the image of the traffic police across the country .
The order issued by Mr. Sood stated that no vehicle will be stopped solely for document checking unless it has committed traffic violations visibly .
The order was implemented after reiterated by the present DGP Alok Mohan,stating that the traffic police job is not enforcement but traffic management,until Home Miniter,Dr.G Parameshwar differed this in a senior police officers meet held recently .
Mr.Parameshwar while recommending law and order police to be visible on the roads to instill a sense of fear among the wrong doers.This according to him also applicable to the traffic police,he said .
Until last two years,the traffic police who are focusing on management while the traffic management centre monitoring the violations online,the traffic police get on the field with special drives to begin with to check on violations .
The traffic policemen deployed at the junctions have been instructed not to stop vehicles involved in violations physically but record the violations in the body cams provided to them.
Since the physical checks on vehicles by traffic police stopped,the motorists developed a immunity of violating the traffic rules and hoodwinked enforcement cameras by hiding the registration number plates .
With the strict Enforcement it has not only instilled a sense of traffic discipline among the careless motorists but also reduced the number of fatal accidents,ADGP, Traffic and road safety,Alok Kumar, said .
Quoting the statistics,Mr.Kumar,said that Bengaluru city alone has managed to save seven lives in the last three months compared to the last year.according to him a total of 76 deaths have been reported in May,while 72 in June and 72 in July last year compared to 62 in May,65 in June and 65 in July this year .
He further said that the gradual dip in the road accident deaths in Karnataka with the districts like Belagavi and Tumkur performance are impressive .
With so many issues plaguing in Roadsafety,stabilizing the deaths on road remains a challenge,he added.
We have stick to the existing rules and check vehicles which are found violating the traffic rules,a senior police officer part of the drive,said .
However many motorists vent their ire stating that the corruption among the traffic police is back on the garb of checking vehicles and harassment continue unabated .
