Implementation of the e-challan system in Delhi Traffic Police.
e-challan System suffered from data inconsistencies, deficient input control and lack of data integrity. Court decisions in respect of court challans were not updated in the system. The handheld device did not have a facility for payment through credit or debit card. Weak administrative control and deficiency in the system resulted in a mismatch both in the number and amount of compounded challans.
Introduction
The main and foremost objective of Delhi Traffic Police (DTP) is to maintain traffic discipline in Delhi by providing safe and smooth flow of traffic. Traffic discipline on roads is maintained through 53 circles by enforcing traffic rules
and regulations effectively. Earlier, the erring vehicles and their owners were challenged for the respective offences through paper challans with the challan books being issued in bulk to each circle for cash and court challans. The cash
challans are settled on the spot on payment of the requisite penalty. Court challans are decided in the court.
In order to have a system for the prosecution of traffic violations in real-time, generation of prosecution reports, prosecuting habitual offenders and data maintenance, DTP switched from manual system of challenging to electronic
system.
Objectives of introducing e-challan
The objectives of introducing e-challan were to:
issue challans for a traffic violation on a 24 x 7 basis;
maintain the details pertaining to all the activities of the Traffic circles/violations/violators;
provide requisite structured/unstructured information to the traffic management officials as and when required;
generate various statutory reports for the administrative use and functioning of the Traffic unit in matters of prosecution of violators and monitoring the functioning of the field officers; and
integrate and network the system with state-of-the-art hardware and application software for the Traffic Police to access and use the information in their day-to-day work.
As per the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, the Transport Department, GNCTD is the nodal agency for implementing the provisions of the Act in NCT of Delhi. Keeping in view the staff constraint, the Transport Department decided (December 1998) to share its compounding powers in respect of offences u/s 177 to 198 of the Act, with DTP. However, the notification delegating these compounding powers to DTP officers did not contain any clause on how and where the revenue receipts from compounding challans, would be deposited by DTP, i.e. into the Consolidated Fund of GoI or Consolidated Fund of GNCTD.
In the absence of any modalities, DTP deposited the receipts from compounding challans under the Major Head 0055-Police, 103-FFF of MHA, GoI, since the Delhi Police was receiving its annual allocations through the
budget of MHA, GoI.
In November 2008, the Transport Department directed DTP to deposit the revenue receipts from compounding challans into the Major Head – 0041- Taxes on Vehicles, 101-IMV (Fee & Fine) of GNCTD, claiming it as their
receipts. In response, MHA conveyed (May 2012) its approval for the change of head of account. After working out all the modalities, DTP started (November 2013) depositing the compounded amount into Major Head pertaining to the Transport Department. The revenue from compounding challans made by DTP during 2012-13 to 2014-15 is depicted in Table 3.5.1 given below:
