Violators have free run as 140 traffic SI posts vacant in city

As per the rules, officials of the rank of sub-inspector and above alone can penalise an errant motorist. Only they have the authorisation to book cases and levy fines. The traffic police wing does not have the luxury to depute the available SIs, numbering around 130 at present, to book cases. 

“We need to assign them to regulate traffic. If they concentrate only on booking of violators, then traffic flow will be affected badly,” a senior traffic official told DTNext. So most of the traffic policemen you see on the roads are constables who have no power to book cases. The SIs and Inspectors are busy handling traffic, VIP movement and attending to other mundane works. It is in this backdrop that traffic rules are violated by irresponsible motorists across the city.

Despite the manpower shortage, the city police have set a target of 7,000 cases per day. Sources said though police manage to book as many cases on some days, most of the days, the cases booked are far less in number. “The idea is not to fix targets. It is true that if the vacancies of SIs are filled up, we could depute more squads to check traffic violations. What we need is proper follow-up on traffic violators,” another traffic police official said.

He said the process of booking cases and levying fines are meant only as a revenue generation measure for the government exchequer. “There is always pressure to book more cases because it is a strong revenue source. But the ideal situation should be to stop violators from repeating the offence. We need follow-up and repeat offenders should be barred from driving,” the official added. 

The Armed Reserve wing, from where policemen get posted to traffic, law and order and crime, also has vacancies for sub-inspectors. “Recently, they had deputed 40 SIs to the city traffic wing but most of them were on the verge of retirement. Many had only six months’ service left,” another senior police official rued. There was a list of seniors who were due for promotion as sub-inspectors but that also is hanging fire. “You need either to recruit a fresh batch of sub-inspectors through direct recruitment or periodically promote relatively young personnel as sub-inspectors so that the shortage of manpower is addressed,” the official added.