The Delhi Traffic Police is in the process of withdrawing more than 1.4 lakh challans issued to commuters for overspeeding on National Highway 24, allegedly because of a mistake on the signboard put up by the PWD on the highway, said police Tuesday.
A Delhi police spokesperson said, “We installed cameras that catch vehicles speeding over 60 km/hour on the stretch. But multiple signboards on the stretch stated the maximum speed limit to be 70 km/hour. These boards violated the current norms of speeding. We tried to contact the PWD officials and sent them notices to change the boards. We have now decided to cancel all challans and set our cameras to record vehicles speeding over 70 km/hour.”
The challans issued for speeding from August till October 10 will be cancelled, said police. Police said that commuters followed the signboards, but cameras caught them “over-speeding”.
According to police, they have received more than 1,40,000 challans in the last two-and-a-half months. “We received several complaints from people about being issued wrong challans. They started demanding photos/videos as evidence for the offence…We eventually discovered that the boards were misleading and have decided to register challans for vehicles speeding over 70 km/hour till PWD puts up new boards,” said a senior officer.
Police said they have started the process of cancellation of challans and are probing cases where people have already paid fines for the wrong challan.
PWD officials didn’t respond to multiple calls and texts by The Indian Express.
