HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has introduced a stringent system to tackle littering and illegal waste disposal across the city. Citizens caught littering roads, dumping construction and demolition (C&D) waste or discarding garbage improperly will now receive instant e-challans. Penalties must be paid digitally via UPI payments.
To enforce this, the GHMC is launching a dedicated mobile app, developed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which will go live within a week.
The new system expands beyond general littering to penalise improper disposal of all waste types, including C&D debris. Previously, field-level officers issued fines manually through challan books, often imposing penalties arbitrarily. This led to discrepancies, with a portion of the collected fines not reaching the GHMC treasury.
There was also no mechanism to track how many challans were actually paid. To address this, officers such as AMOHs, DEEs, and ACPs will now issue e-challans through the app, mirroring the traffic police’s automated system for vehicle violations.
GHMC Additional Commissioner (Sanitation), CN Raghu Prasad said the app will automate penalty generation, removing human discretion. After a two-to-three-day training programme for staff, the app is expected to be operational within a week.
He emphasised that all fines must be paid via UPI, ensuring direct deposit into GHMC’s treasury and real-time tracking of compliance.