YSR Congress Party leader Amer Ali Khan has demanded that the Traffic wings of both Hyderabad and Cyberabad Police stop imposing heavy challan on the vehicles users.
In a media statement, Amer Ali Khan said that the Traffic Police should focus more on regulating the movement of traffic than collecting huge fines from the vehicle owners/users. Describing the imposition of challan as “roadside extortion”, the YSRCP leader said that payment of challans is now affecting the livelihood of vehicle users. He said that the traffic police should educate the people and should not tolerate violation of rules. However, instead of making the people follow rules, the traffic police have concentrated its strength on collection of challan amount from the violators.
Citing an instance of negative impact of challans, he said a youth, G Shiva Prasad of Rajendra Nagar, committed suicide after his two-wheeler vehicle was detained by the Langar Houz Police for non-payment of Traffic challan. He allegedly consumed some unknown poison on January 28 and later died at the Osmania General Hospital on February 5.
Amer Ali Khan said that the Traffic wings of both Hyderabad and Cyberabad police have been converted into profit making units. As per the statistics, on an average, two out of every three persons living in the limits of Hyderabad and Cyberabad police have been made to pay challan for violation of traffic rules during the year 2013. The Traffic Wings of both the Commissionerates put together imposed fine on as many as 40.36 lakh vehicle users in 2013. Further, together they collected a whopping Rs 67.83 crore towards fine from these violators.
While the Hyderabad City Police collected Rs 45.08 crore from 30,87,915 violators, the Cyberabad Police collected fine amount of Rs 22.75 crore from 948,140 violators. Most of the fine amount has been collected for violation of Motors Vehicle Act by both the Commissionerates.
Amer Ali Khan said that the common people are already hit due to rising prices and hike in electricity and other bills. In such a scenario, burdening them with heavy traffic challans is illegal and unethical. He requested the Commissioners of both Hyderabad and Cyberabad to focus on educating the masses on traffic rules than asking their teams to collect huge fine amounts from the people.
The YSRCP leader also appealed to all vehicle owners/users to strictly follow the traffic rules to avoid payment of challan from their hard earned money. (INN)