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Deterring measures crucial

Young Bites. Dated: 7/20/2017 11:19:36 AM

The Governor has been reiterating his serious concern that the regulatory authorities, particularly the traffic police, have yet to take adequately deterring measures to ensure against operation of old and technically unfit vehicles, inadequately trained drivers, overloading of passenger carrying vehicles, over-speeding on narrow and poorly maintained roads. Coordinated effort by the stake holders to bring visible improvements in traffic regulation in the twin capital cities and other towns in the State is needed. More like metro cities, Jammuities can also brag about the new-found strict traffic violation rules adopted by the Traffic police department. New challan system that has been introduced by the Traffic Police is to guarantee free movement of vehicles for which they have rolled out this new policy in order to improving traffic discipline by taking stringent actions against those violating the set of laws. Recently, it has been observed that traffic cops are charging challan in the city for obstructive or wrong parking. Since traffic jams and wrong parking along the road side are major reasons for traffic congestion, they slow down the whole traffic machinery. In order to create deterrence among the traffic rules violators, sources reveal that the cops are ordered to keep an eye over the wrongly parked vehicles and paste a notice on those vehicles obstructing the traffic movement. As per the reports, the duties have been delegated to the staff under which they put on notices on the vehicles. The intention is to call upon the vehicle owners to the police station and meet up the Senior Superintendent of Police, Traffic within a period of 15 days to pay the fine charged under law. It is mentioned in the notice that any failure to reply the contents of the notice within 15 days would result in submitting the challan in the court in addition Section 187 M.V. Act 1988 which carries punishment of imprisonment for a term which may extend to 3 months or fine which may extend to Rs 500 or with both, in addition to the punishment provided for violation of traffic law/regulation. On one hand, the move deserves appreciation since it will reduce inconvenience caused to the general public on the roads. This on-the- spot issuance of tickets for the offense is a noticeable effort made by the department. New rules state that vehicles flouting traffic rules will be charged with the fine and if the needful is not done, the vehicles will be confiscated with court’s permission. As of now, the fine is being charged for wrong parking only, not for other violations like jumping traffic signal, over speeding, lane-cutting etc. still the move has somehow alerted and made people more conscious about traffic rules and regulations. On the other hand, in actual fact traffic policemen paste notices on the vehicles which are parked at Green Belt Park and Gandhi Nagar area and those people have kept vehicles outside their homes just to meet the targets. The authorities have ordered these cops to get at least 60-70 challans per day due to which they charge fine to vehicles parked outside the houses. Later, when the violators reach to the concerned office situated at panjtirthi to deposit the fine imposed on them, it again leads to traffic jam near panjtirthi mosque for the dearth of parking facility. Thus , a fool-proof plan needs to be designed to avoid traffic nuisance. To those who might have observed, there are about hundreds of trucks and other vehicles parked along the Narwal highway and Kunjwani-Sainik Colony road which cause obstruction and block the road but no action is action against them. Moreover there are no signboards anywhere on these places which can forbid the drivers from wrong parking alongside the highways. The initiatives taken by the department are worth appreciation but the authorities must adopt new measures to ensure that meeting targets should not be the only motive rather they must run programs and make sure that no vehicles should be parked near footpaths, pedestrian crossings, hospitals or schools or college entrances and the prohibited areas.