Social media is the fourth eye of Chennai traffic police

CHENNAI: Because of extensive use of social media handles to attend to complaints from the public as many as 1,267 violations were brought to the notice of the Greater Chennai Traffic Police in last 2 months through twitter for which 90.5% of complaints were punctually acted upon and disposed and the same was shared to the twitter users, said the police on Thursday.

Chennai traffic police said that the social media has become the fourth eye of the Chennai traffic police like the third eye of CCTV.

As of now, GCTP’s Twitter handle (@ChennaiTraffic) is the most familiar handle to the road users and has 69,162 followers with 10,400 tweets received, a press release from GCTP claimed.

On an average, GCTP receives and disposes about 25 tweets per day.

Similarly, Facebook (Greater Chennai Traffic Police) has 1,01,734 followers and Instagram (chennaitrafficpolice) has 5,256 followers.

GCTP also receives complaints on Whatsapp no: 9003130103. In

Whatsapp alone 2062 complaints were received and disposed in 2022. In 2023 another 669 complaints were received and 659 of them were rectified and disposed

"Despite relentless efforts of GCTP towards regulation, enforcement and improvement, many local traffic issues may go unnoticed. To overcome this, GCTP has opened various social media handles such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to reach out to the public to receive inputs on traffic obstructions and violations as social media has emerged as a

powerful source of communication" noted Kapil Kumar Saratkar, additional commissioner of police , Chennai traffic.

Most complaints received on social media handles are violations relating to rider & pillion not wearing helmet, unauthorized parking

of vehicles on platforms, vehicles causing traffic obstruction, No/Defective number plates and Triples riding for prompt action by the GCTP.

In this regard, the public are expected to provide the details of the place, date and time where and when such violations are noticed so as to assign the concerned jurisdictional officers for immediate action on the posts, the officer said.

GCTP very much appreciates and encourages the public participation in the traffic management through social media handles.

On the other hand, many allegations are being made against GCTP men and officers in a way to defame GCTP. Three such allegations in social media were dealt by concerned officers in charge.

However, after enquiry it came to light that those allegations are false. It was found that the conduct of those false accusers is bad throughout their social media handles and they often use abusive languages in social media.

Apologies were received by them through their social media handle in relation to the false allegations posted by them and confirmed the deletion of those falsely alleged posts.

However, GCTP is committed to the highest legal, professional, people friendly and honest procedures and open to constructive evidence based criticism and any complaint against its personnel is and will be taken with utmost seriousness, properly enquired and appropriate action initiated in case of a wrongdoing or excess but to keep the morale of our hard working GCTP police personnel high, any deliberate mischievous and defaming comments/videos will be dealt appropriately, the press note added.