Absence of CCTV challan software proves costly for traffic ‘violators’

Case 2 “The CCTV cameras caught me and my brother on a scooter without helmet on June 6. It was in August that the challan was delivered to me by post. The challan had an incorrect date as we had gone for Amarnath Yatra on the day the challan claimed that we had been violators. It was found that the cops had mistakenly altered the date from June 6 to July 7 in the challan,” says Pooja Mahajan,a Sector 38 resident. “They can issue challans to Chandigarh residents only and it still takes two months for them to dispatch the slip,” she says.

Case 3 Traffic police officials were returned a challan made through CCTVs to one M K Srivastava in July this year. While the challan reached the destination in Sector 31 three months after the offence was first detected,the slip was returned as no one by that name resided at the address.

The system of manually issuing challans to traffic violators “caught” through CCTV cameras of the Chandigarh Traffic police leaves much to be desired. Endless delays in dispatch of challan slips,errors while issuing challans and shortage of staff hamper the effective functioning of the system of using CCTV cameras,which were installed with much fanfare by the Traffic police at a whopping cost of Rs 6 crore in May. The police have been making use of cameras to issue challans since May 7,with the cameras functioning at 20 major intersections of the city.

While it was much publicised earlier that the CCTVs would automatically issue challans with a specialised automatic software,this software has not been installed till date. According to sources,the system “has been called off” after the cops found it unviable.

The traffic police are,thus,issuing challans manually with merely four traffic personnel sitting in the traffic control room,scrutinising the CCTV traffic footage and then issuing challans by writing the number of the vehicle on slips. The system has resulted in a number of errors leaving,the “violators” harassed.

While the Traffic police have issued 14,800 challans with the help of CCTVs till date,the chunk of these were for violation of zebra crossings (Detecting a stationed vehicle at a traffic light is easy for the operators). But even that comes with errors.

Besides,the staff shortage has resulted in long delays till a challan finally reaches its destination by post. According to traffic police officials,dispatching a challan manually is a cumbersome process. Out of the 14,800 challans issued,slips have been posted to only 7,000 of the addresses till now. Violators are receiving challans even three months after the offence was committed. Moreover,no one mans the control room after 5 pm and there is still no software to challan outstation vehicles.

“We have been facing a delay in dispatch as manual challaning involves a lengthy process. It will be sorted out soon with more staff being provided to the Traffic department. As far as the errors are concerned,they shall be looked into,” said DSP (Traffic) B S Negi.