Supreme Court suggests adding unpaid traffic challans to electricity bills

The Supreme Court has suggested linking unpaid traffic challans to electricity bills to help recover outstanding fines. The suggestion came during a hearing on electronic enforcement of traffic violations, where the court was informed that states and Union territories issued e-challans of around Rs 45,000 crore, of which about Rs 25,000 crore has been recovered.

A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan said issuing e-challans alone was not enough and that authorities needed to focus on recovering the fines. “It is not just sufficient to keep issuing e-challans. Police may issue thousands and lakhs of such e-challans. The question is recovery of fines as sought to be imposed by way of the e-challans,” Justice Pardiwala said, according to Bar and Bench.

Court seeks stronger recovery of pending fines

The court suggested that unpaid traffic fines could be added to electricity dues, with the possibility of power disconnection providing an additional way to recover the outstanding amount. “If people are not paying traffic challans, add it to their electricity dues bill. They’ll have to pay electricity bills else power line will be disconnected. Work it out. In this country, you have to find a way out,” the bench said.

The court clarified that linking challans to electricity bills was a suggestion made during the hearing and not a direction for immediate implementation. 

Vehicle services could be blocked over unpaid challans

The Supreme Court also discussed measures that could restrict vehicle-related services until outstanding challans are cleared. These include stopping renewal of registration certificates, withholding duplicate RCs and blocking ownership transfers.

The court also suggested blacklisting vehicles with unpaid challans on the Parivahan portal, withholding fitness and PUC certificates and stopping the renewal of driving licences. It also discussed suspending licences that are already in force. Justice Pardiwala stressed that any measures adopted would need to work in practice, saying, “The authorities need to work at the ground level having regard to ground realities.”

Random vehicle checks were also suggested to identify vehicles with unpaid e-challans. Where such a vehicle is found, the court said necessary steps could be taken to impound it.

The suggestions were made while the court was hearing a plea concerning electronic enforcement of traffic violations and recovery of unpaid e-challan fines, as part of a long-running 2012 public interest litigation on road safety.