Telangana: Traffic police receive Rs 3 cr on discounted challans on day-one

Hyderabad: The traffic police issued a notification stating that pending challans on vehicles will be discounted from March 1 to 31. It was the day the citizens were waiting for their dream come true. As soon as the website turned active, they made a beeline to make payments and get discounts.

An officer of the Traffic department said, "we have collected around Rs. 3 crore on the day one of the discounted challans; are hoping the citizens will keep clearing their challans because our data has revealed that whopping Rs 1,750 crore is pending. As the pandemic has cast a huge dent on pockets of the citizens, we came out with the noble idea of giving a discount."

"Also, we have instructed police officers to increase the number of check points and request the citizens to clear their dues immediately."

However, as the day began, the website started giving hiccups as the traffic load was heavy. Many users were trying to get their pending challans cleared on day one itself. Due to this a note was displayed on the website, "Don't be in a hurry. This facility is available up to 31 March 2022." An officer, on condition of anonymity, said, though the department was geared up for the most awaited moment and the system capabilities and bandwidth were also raised 10 times than usual, there were some hiccups for a brief moment.

Those were also cleared. We have also checked the fault tolerance earlier under multiple scenarios. In case of any emergency we had also deployed alternative lines as back-up to control the internet traffic in case of any crash in the server. With advance preparedness we were able to control the situation, but a slight margin of error will always be there. With the discount in place now, the State government expects around Rs 500-700 crore in its exchequer. This move has given a huge relief to the common man.