CHANDIGARH/JALANDHAR:Aam Aadmi Party, Punjab, senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP), Harpal Singh Cheema and Deputy Leader of Opposition, Sarabjeet Kaur Manuka, have said that the imposition of hefty fines on traffic violators would promote corruption among the traffic deployed on the roads to check violations.
In a joint statement issued from party headquarters in Chandigarh on Friday, Harpal Singh Cheema and Sarabjeet Kaur Manuke said that hike in the fines won’t help stop traffic violations on the roads, saying the traffic police was not equipped with the adequate infrastructure.
Cheema said, quoting the input culled through RTI, that in the year 1966, there were 4, 000 vehicles in the state, the traffic police personnel were a meagerly 1, 200 heads, saying the number of vehicles had crossed the one crore mark while the number of employees had trundled at a snail pace touching the 1, 535 figure.
The RTI input further confirmed that in Moga district only, there were 29 traffic police personnel, while the situation in other districts was no better. Interestingly, more than 15, 000 police personnel had been deployed with politicians and top-ranking officers of the state.
The LoP said that a sizeable chunk of the traffic police deployed on the roads was corrupt from top to bottom and lacked basic infrastructure, stating that until or unless the general awareness on adhering to the traffic norms was not taken from the school level to top levels, observance of zero political interference in traffic police functioning, traffic violations would not stop even if the fine was raised ten times.
Bibi Sarabjeet Kaur Munuke posed a query as to who should be held responsible for the deaths that took place due to road mishaps due to stray cattle and dogs and weather-beaten roads, saying that due to the lopsided policies of the successive governments in the state, more than 900 precious lives were lost on the Ludhiana-Moga highway, while more than 40 were lost on Rajpura GT Road. “Aren’t these traffic violations on the part of the successive governments and the highway authority?” she asked.