Cyberabad police go door-to-door as tens of thousands of challans remain unpaid

In a first for Hyderabad, traffic police started knocking on the doors of violators with huge stacks of unpaid challans. The Cyberabad police, who started this initiative in May this year, said that they took this initiative to do away with challans pending for years, and to curb repeat offenders.

The push also follows a string of serious incidents involving vehicles with unpaid challans this year. Even in the recent Chevella tragedy in which 19 people died, the lorry carried multiple unpaid challans as did the bus involved in Kurnool fire mishap, for violations such as entering no-entry zones, signal jumping and stop-line crossing.

The numbers uncovered the sheer scale of the problem. It was found that 24 vehicles had piled up more than 100 challans each, with one of the offenders reaching 162. Police also identified 12,425 vehicles with exactly 10 challans and 42,777 with between 11 and 20. Another 7,325 had accumulated between 21 and 30 challans, while 2,081 had accumulated between 31 and 40. A further 734 vehicles carried 41 to 50 challans, and 551 had anywhere between 51 and 100. Eight vehicles had 121 challans or more.

To tackle the backlog, small divisional teams of two to three personnel were formed to trace owners, visit their homes and ensure payments were made. “Of the 1,723 individuals with more than 30 challans, 1,286 have already cleared their dues. The initiative is yielding results, with many offenders paying at least half, if not the entire amount. Otherwise offenders keep waiting for the discount or just let it pile up,” said a senior traffic officer from Cyberabad, noting that persistent offenders are often the same people involved in serious road mishaps.

The officer also confirmed that several vehicles flagged during the drive turned out to be linked to crime cases. A few were stolen vehicles resold informally without any transfer of ownership, leaving original owners still receiving challan messages. If the original owner has changed their contact details, then the challans hit a dead end.

Explaining about the collection of challan amount, the officer said that the money goes to the State treasury, while about ₹35 per challan is collected as a convenience charge for digital processing. “Then there are nominal deductions like ₹14 from each challan for software maintenance and postal expenses etc,” he said.

Challans on WhatsApp soon

Meanwhile, the Cyberabad police will soon have PDFs of challans sent to violators via WhatsApp, instead of the traditional postal letter format. The official shared that tenders have been floated to onboard a firm to handle the backend and technical process for the shift. This, the officer said, will cut delays and paper waste.