VIJAYAWADA: With an aim to curb the irregularities in the e-challan system, Andhra Pradesh police are contemplating to bring a comprehensive digital solution for enforcement of traffic rules delivered through an android-based mobile application under the pan-India project of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
The move came after the State police unearthed a major scandal involving diversion of money collected as fine through e-challans for traffic rules violation to the tune of Rs 36.55 crore by former director general of police’s (DGP) son-in-law.
With the arrest of Avinash, the entire traffic challans and its administrative operations in all the districts across the State came to a grinding halt. “Since both the server and mobile applications stopped, the traffic cops are limited to traffic management for the past two months,” said a senior official on the condition of anonymity.When TNIE contacted, DGP Kasireddy Rajendranath Reddy said the NIC offered to provide the portal at free of cost providing technical support and a comprehensive mobile application.
“There will be no middlemen now and all the amount collected in the form of traffic violations will be directly credited to the DGP’s account, of which the service charge amount will be used for traffic needs. The application will be made available after completing a few technical works in a couple of weeks,” said the DGP Rajendranath Reddy.
It is to be recalled that the scam came to light after the police started an internal probe over the differences in the collection of traffic fines in Tirupati and it was revealed that the former DGP Sambasiva Rao’s son-in-law Kommireddy Avinash’s company, Data Evolve, obtained the contract of e-challan service provider, software and mobile application services for police to impose challans and collect money from the violators in 2017.
“Instead of directly depositing the money from RazorPay gateway into the DGP’s account, the money was credited into Avinash’s account with the cloned app developed by Avinash,” said police who investigated the case.
User-friendly features
The new window for e-challan by National Informatics Centre (NIC) will provide a number of user-friendly features covering all major functionalities of the traffic enforcement system such as issuance of traffic e-challan, on-the-spot cashless payment, real-time access to Vahan and Sarathi database, access to previous records and integration with DigiLocker and m-Parivahan apps using a hand-held device