Kerala motor vehicle department sleuths to shoot' violators at sight

Kochi: Officers of the Motor Vehicle Department (MVD) would be soon seen clicking photos of traffic violations under the ‘Smart Enforcement Application’ initiative as part of the modernization drive. Commuters could expect sleuths with shutter bugs at every nook and corner of accident prone areas as now every officer is given a daily target -- all officers with the Enforcement Squads should take 50 cases using the photos they click while other Enforcement officials need to register 25 cases daily.

A new direction in this regard by the Transport Commissioner to all regional offices warns of action against officers who fail to meet the target. “This would mean over 500 officers will be part of the process. Earlier too the practice of using cameras to record traffic offenses was there but under the new initiative, an officer need to just upload the picture in his system installed with Smart Enforcement Application and upon giving the vehicle number and offense he can instantly take print out of the penalty notice and sent it by post,” said a senior officer.

So far only a handful of officials were deployed with cameras to capture images of traffic rule violations. “They have to write memo by hand and the whole process was time-consuming. Now if an offender is caught, he will get the penalty notice within two days. There is also legality with the notice bearing the emblem of the department instead of a plain post letter,” the officer said.