Hefty Fines Not A Problem - Odisha State Commerce and Transport Minister

Posted by Tathya Media on September 9th, 2019

The recently passed Motor Vehicles Act 2019 has sent ripples of fear down the spine of people who are now coming out to move from one place to another with their own vehicles. The new law that was passed on the night of 31st August 2019, had quite an impact on people.

As far as the coastal state Odisha is concerned, the rule has led to quite a few situations. Bhubaneswar News of the first week of September showed a scenario where an Autorickshaw driver was fined a mind-boggling Rs. 47500 at once.

The said autorickshaw driver was having multiple traffic violations laid over him such as the absence of air pollution certificate, drunken driving, the absence of important documents such as RC, Driving License, etc.

The situation worsened when the autorickshaw driver was pleading the police to instead seize his vehicle or throw him in Jail, instead of making him pay the fined amount. In another case, a different autorickshaw driver was fined Rs. 27000.

The case is pretty much the same here as well. In the first few days itself, the Odisha State Government has stated that they have collected around 88 Lakh Rupees worth of fines from commuters of both small as well as large vehicles.

Odisha News has been completely filled with situations that highlight the aftereffects of this rather interesting rule. Coming out in support of the law passed, the Odisha State Commerce and Transport Minister, Padmanabha Behera expressed that this law is not mindless and has the potential to have good effects on the overall behavior on the roads.

Odisha, as we all know, is suffering from one of the worst cases of roadside behaviours. There is a tremendous spike in the number of road accidents that have occurred for the past half a decade. Owing to such situations, the State Minister was not at all budged by the quadrupling or so of the fine amounts right now.

On a rather different note, this might lead to a chance of unlawful framing if situations get out of hand. Hopefully, people, police and the government will work on the cause together. People were also spotted going into a whataboutery stance, complaining about the lack of proper roads and hazardous situations like potholes, etc.

Now, we will have to see how the governments are utilizing these penalties into making the road transport network a much better place than ever.