Bhubaneswar: The government collected penalties worth Rs 1.06 crore from traffic violators on the first day of the enforcement of the amended Motor Vehicle Act, 2019.
The government enforced the new law March 1 after keeping it in abeyance for six months. While 126 persons were penalized for triple riding, 49 were fined for talking over phones while driving. Ten persons were penalised for driving on wrong routes, 1,831 were caught for not wearing helmets, 349 for not wearing seat belts, 24 for drunken driving and 277 for over-speeding.
Of the total `1.06 crore, RTO officials collected Rs 88 lakh from 1,785 people while the police issued challans of `18 lakh to 2,112 people. Commerce and Transport Minister Padmanabha Behera said officials have been told to behave properly while collecting penalties. Meanwhile, the Congress demanded that penalty amounts should be reduced as in Gujarat and some other states.
Officials of Bhubaneswar RTO (I) Monday imposed penalties of Rs 25,500 each on two buses of a private engineering college. The officials who caught the vehicles at CRP Square failed to show fitness and pollution certificates.
