KP’s one time fine scheme collects 47 crores

Kolkata Police had introduced a onetime fine settlement scheme back in December 2018 to dispose pending cases and collect fine amounts as soon as possible. After thoroughly chalking out the operations of the scheme, the Kolkata Police had introduced the settlement scheme in two phases to dispose lakhs of pending traffic violation cases since 2003-04. In the first phase of the scheme, defaulters had to pay 35 percent of the actual fine amount whereas in the second phase defaulters had to pay 50 percent of the fine amount. The scheme finally ended on February 13th of this year fetching approximately Rs 47 crores to the Kolkata Police. It approximately disposed 1.19 lakhs of pending traffic cases. The actual amount of the pending cases would add up to almost Rs 128 crores but the officials of the Kolkata Police weren’t expecting more than Rs 30 crores to be collected through this scheme. However, the amount reached to a whooping Rs 47 crores after the collection ended. The scheme would have attracted more violators but since a lot of them have sold their vehicles and the details of the current owners weren’t updated, the owners did not show up to clear the pending cases. Several commercial vehicles which completed 15 years of service were discarded thus the owners of those vehicles too didn’t clear the pending cases, otherwise the collected amount for the defaulters could be higher.