SHILLONG, Feb 10: An already comfortable lot of commuters, or rather violators will now be relieved of the only burden of making a trip to the respective traffic branch with the Shillong Traffic Police (STP) now set to implement e-challan facility in the city.
The STP on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with State Bank of India for implementation of the service.
Whilst earlier traffic rule violators had to swipe cards at the spot and run an errand to the nearest police station, now the STP will generate e-challans and impose penalties digitally.
The payment from traffic violations can be transacted on the spot through cash or card payments via Point of Sale (POS) machine carried by STP officials. The violators will also be given the option to pay the penalty amounts at the branches by producing the issued e-challan at the respective traffic units.
The system has been integrated with Vahan and Sarathi applications which will enable the traffic police to fetch the details of the violator, thereby reducing the time taken to issue a challan.
“It is under process. I cannot say when will it start but the work is under way,” said East Khasi Hills SP, Sylvester Nongtnger, when enquired about the current status of the e-challan system and its likely date of launch.
Asked about steps taken to keep the roads safe, the SP said: “Measures are being taken by traffic police like surprise checking in strategic as well as other locations. No doubt accidents occur at night due to overspeeding, but measures are put in place to prevent them”.
With regard to CCTV cameras installed to monitor the roads at night, Nongtnger said, “Some (cameras) are functional while some aren’t. Hence, our personnel are deployed at different locations to check overspeeding and wrong-side driving”.
