The hopes of the police department reaping a windfall appear to be darting away from the mark as vehicle owners cleared only 1.30 crore pending challans amounting to ₹135 crore since the launch of their ‘mega discount’ offer on March 1.
Mounting unpaid challanspending for more than seven years gave the hope to the department to realise at least ₹500 crore (discounted amount) out of a whopping ₹1,750 crore as the outstanding amount for over six crore challans across the State.
But, the experience in the past 15 days does not appear to be catching up with the pace that was required to reach the target. The police top bosses are wracking their brains as to what went wrong between the promise and actual money trickling into State’s exchequer and were said to be holding strategic meetings, said a senior police officer. “Awareness in districts is very poor. Many are not familiar with how to clear the challans using online and they don’t go to Mee Seva centres. A large number of people don’t know how to check the pending challans,” he said.
However, they were hopeful of receiving pending challan amounts as expected as they still have two more weeks to go. If the pending challans payment fails to catch up with the desired target, the facility may be extended by a few weeks, the officer said.
“Steps would be taken to further create awareness and motivate the vehicle owners to use this one-time opportunity and clear their outstanding amounts expeditiously as the pandemic has pushed many into an economic crisis, this is our attempt to ease their burden and start afresh,” Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Avula Venkata Ranganath told The Hindu.
He said 80 % to 85% of the challans cleared in the past two weeks pertained to three urban police commissionerates of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda .
“Of 1.30 crore clears challans , 60 lakhs are from Hyderabad police commissionerate itself,” the officer said, adding that apart from the tri-commissionerate in the capital, a large number of challans were cleared in Karimnagar , Warangal, Khammam and Nizamabad commissionerates.
Mr. Ranganath, who is also the nodal officer for the eChallans for Telangana, said that more than 75% of the pending challans would be liquidated by the end of March.
