Taking IT-enabled police services a level higher, the state police has introduced a new mobile phone-based system for challaning vehicle drivers and compounding traffic offences to save time and prevent harassment of motorists, particularly tourists.
Traffic police personnel on field duty will carry mobile phones in place of challan books. The police has designed a special software module with the help of the local Nation Informatics Centre (NIC) for the purpose, which has been installed on GPRS-enabled mobile phones provided to the field staff of the traffic wing.
The module helps access from the national database the complete details of a vehicle and its owner by feeding the registration number. The module also contains a complete list of traffic offences and the police official will only have to click at the section applicable.
The software will automatically generate the amount of penalty to be paid for compounding the offence and provide the options of making the payment on the spot or at the office of the officer designated. The challan will be conveyed through a message to the mobile of the person concerned.
In case the payment is made on the spot, a receipt will be sent through an SMS instantly. To began with, 60 mobile phones have been provided to the Shimla city police on a pilot basis and the scheme will be gradually extended.
Director-General of Police ID Bhandari said the main objective of the service was to change the face and functioning of the police by using technology.
“Our democracy is mature enough and it no longer required a police force to instil the fear of khaki in the minds of the people. It requires a citizen-centric friendly police service to maintain order and peace. With a small population, high literacy rate and state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, the state can take the lead in bringing about the transformation,” he said at a public interaction organised to dedicate the web-service portal ‘Kanoon Vyavastha’.
Inspector-General of Police Ashok Sharma said with all police stations going online, senior officers could monitor the functioning in real time as details of cases registered and daily diary reports were available online. He said supervising officers could intervene, if required, and issue directions to the ‘thana’ staff to ensure proper action on complaints.
From January next, information about complaints converted into first information reports would also be available online and the status of complaints could be ascertained online.
This year, over 4,000 complaints were lodged online and 90 per cent of those had been disposed of. The feedback obtained revealed that 80 per cent of the complainants were satisfied with action taken.
To make the web-portal more useful, e-services offered by other departments concerned had also been integrated, which included vehicle data of the Transport Department and land records of the Revenue Department.
