BHUBANESWAR: While the Commissionerate of Police (CP) is all set to start penalising traffic violators on the basis of CCTV footage, the initiative may turn into a major hurdle due to change in postal addresses which people had furnished during registration of their vehicles.
Two months after installation of CCTV cameras at major junctions of the Capital City, around 15,000 traffic violators have been detected by police. The CP has decided to start issuing e-challans to violators in phases which will commence from Wednesday.
The traffic police will source postal addresses of vehicle owners from the database maintained by Regional Transport Office (RTO), Bhubaneswar.
However, the RTO started maintaining an electronic database from 2007. Hence, there is a huge backlog which is yet to be updated in the database for vehicles purchased before 2007.
Besides, more than 70 per cent of the addresses in RTO database are incorrect as vehicle owners have changed their locations over the years, sources said.
“Submission of address proof for vehicle registration was not mandatory earlier due to which most of postal addresses in the database are either incomplete or non-specific,” an RTO official said.
Unless the RTO upgrades the complete postal addresses of the registered vehicle owners, the e-challan system will not be effective, a retired police official said.
It may be noted that e-challans will be issued for offences like driving without helmet, seat belt, triple riding and jumping signals. The e-challan will be sent to the address registered against the vehicle registration number at the RTO.
The CP has collected footage from 114 CCTV cameras which have been installed at 28 strategic locations in the city.