Lights, Camera, Challan!

Cameras across Delhi are catching traffic rule violators unawares. VIPs and other important people are no longer able to bully past helpless police personnel.

- Jeevan Prakash Sharma

So you are despairing over the notices sent by the Delhi traffic police: red light jumping, improper parking, driving above the speed limit…And wondering where did you commit these offences? But worry not, you are in august compa­ny. Among the thousands of people slapped traffic violation notices—‘challaned’ as you like to say in typically desi terminology—in Delhi in recent months are Union ministers and leaders from across the political spectrum. And one of the names is…yes, you read it right, Kanchan Gadkari, wife of Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari, who was pivotal in amending traffic laws to make violations a costly affair. Con­gress leader Salman Khurshid has as many as 15 pending notices against one of the several vehicles registered in his name.

But a notice simply doesn’t imply that the vehicle was driven by the person in whose name it is registered—it could have been a driver or a family member. The moot point is about technology which has helped bridge the gap between commoners and VIPs. What a traffic policeman on duty may not have been able to do so far—challan vehicles bel­onging to ministers—has been accomplished by traffic cameras installed across the city. Whether the traffic police have enough teeth to go after the VIP offender to realise the fines or pursue a court case is another matter altogether.

One of the jokes going around is about the kith and kin of influential people in Delhi—political leaders, page­three celebrities or wealthy business­ men—whose one­line answer to any argument on the road is, “