Truck driver fined Rs. 86,500 under new Motor Vehicle Act
In a bizarre piece of news, a truck driver in the Sambalpur district of Odisha was fined a whopping Rs. 86,500 for traffic violations. The incident occurred on September 3, however, it came to light only when a picture of the challan went viral on social media on Saturday evening. The driver, Ashok Jadav, was fined under the amended Motor Vehicle Act.
According to The New Indian Express, Jadav was spotted violating traffic norms on Tuesday afternoon. He was driving a truck that belonged to Nagaland-based private company BLA Infrastructure Private Limited and was loaded with a JCB machine. The truck was traveling from Talcher town of Angul district to Chhattisgarh when it was intercepted by traffic officials in Sambalpur.
Meanwhile, here's the breakdown of the fine: He was fined for allowing an unauthorized person to drive (Rs. 5,000), not having a driving license (Rs. 5,000), overloading with an excess of 18 tonnes (Rs. 56,000), carrying over dimension projections (Rs. 20,000) and general offense (Rs. 500). However, after negotiating with officials for about five hours, Jadav managed to bring it down to Rs. 70,000.
#MotorVehiclesAct2019: A truck driver was challaned Rs 86,500 for traffic violations including overloading, over-dimensional load driving without a valid DL on Sept 3 by a traffic inspector of Transport Dept in #Sambalpur; later a fine of Rs 70,000 was collected from him pic.twitter.com/GoEt0BJhjl
— OTV (@otvnews) September 8, 2019
Notably, Sambalpur's RTO Lalit Mohan Behera said that Jadav was fined as per the amended Motor Vehicle Act. Odisha is among the few states that started implementing the amended MV Act from September 1 when it came into force. According to Hindustan Times, Odisha has already collected over Rs. 88L as penalties in the first four days of its implementation- highest in the country.
On a related note, an auto-rickshaw driver was fined Rs. 47,500 in Bhubaneswar last week for driving without a valid driving license, a registration certification, and insurance certificate, and for drunken driving. Meanwhile, the state's transport department has decided to set up a call center to address complaints regarding the new license laws, harassment and wrong challan, Odisha commerce and transport secretary Srinivas said.
The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2019 was passed in the Parliament last month and came into force on September 1 to much controversy. The amended MV Act raised fines drastically such as, a drunk driving violation would now set you back Rs. 10,000 as opposed to the Rs. 2,000 fine earlier. Thus far, only nine states and UTs have implemented the amended MV Act.
