Who can legislate to increase fines?
It is a well known fact as even Mr Praveen Sood iterates that the local police, i.e Bangalore City Police do not have powers to fine traffic offences. It is still dictated by the Central Motor Vehicles Act. Even the Chief Minister of Karnataka does not have such legislative powers.
Only the Union Minister and the Minister of State, Shri T R Baalu and Shri K H Muniyappa have powers to table an amendment in the Central Motor Vehicles Act. I doubt they can do it within this session of parliament, but IMO, we need to create a momentum in order to have the CMV amended.
Ideally, if fines are high, then traffic can be controlled and the fines can act as additional revenue for Bangalore City Police. As it is, fines are very paltry, say Rs. 100 /- or less and even are as much as a decent parking fee lot in some of our city malls!
Second, for a city like Bangalore, we need to have highest fine inside the area covered by Inner Core Ring Road, high within Outer Ring Road and less within the Proposed Peripheral Ring Road. In addition, not just parking fines, even one way fines, skipping traffic signals, driving without helmet and seat belts, using high beam can be fined heavily so that such violations are curbed.
I propose petitioning the Union Minister and the Minister of State. We have some advantage because of the proximity of the Minister of State, Shri K H Muniyappa who is from Bangalore. Perhaps we can organise a meet with him exclusively to discuss how fines are administered.
I welcome your comments!
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Cess on fines
Can GoK instead legislate to impose a tax/cess on fines like how they are being levied on auto fuel? Only the cess could go up to 3000% based on the type of offence.
Fines
Mr Sood does not seem to be in favour
Fines should move with the times
On this one I agree with MCadambi ;). A fine of Rs.100 for jumping lights was a lot when a salary of Rs.5000/month was considered quite high. Today the same fine is meaningless for a person who earns Rs.50,000 or rs.100,000 per month.
Mr.Sood with due respect should check out what Delhi has done. When I was there recently, the taxi driver put on his seat belt without fail. he also told me that governors were made compulsory for taxis. He said there was a Rs.2000 fine for going faster than 60kmph in the city.
Srivathsa
Drive safe. It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.
what about implementing the fines?
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore
Fines are adjusted to income in developed countries
the problem and some ideas
Karnataka acts - fine for cattle etc
Just noticed that at the end of the traffic fine table (here), there is a separate section marked as "KArnataka Police/Traffic Act". See the entries:
So, does this mean that the state can legislate new fines on top of whats listed by CMV act? How does Karnataka Traffic Act play with CMV?
Incentive to fining cop and MBO for fining 'n' offenders
One way to avoid bribing is to introduce Incentives to cops for each fine they put. Cops may become ridiculous, but, the system improves.
who does what - needs to be clear
I think the spot-fine list projected in that BTP page mostly talks about fines imposed on violations on the road.. and the ones silkboard pointed out seem to be ones imposed on people obstructing the free flow of vehicles on the road. (Taking bicycles within this looks weird though!) So it looks like anything that is supposed to be on the road, but violating the rules is fined by the CMV act, and anything that is not supposed to be on the road, but is, and hence violating some rule, is permitted to be fined by the state traffic dept.
This is exactly what is going wrong in our system of governance. There's no clear decentalization of governance. Road transport of all the obvious things must belong to the state list but still seems to be sitting pretty in the concurrent list in CMV pages - controlled by the central govt.
A re-look at the items that are covered under state-list/central-list and the items under concurrent-list is the key to framing that ideal governance that can only take a setup such as in India towards better times.
-Nijavaada