Amendment of Motor Vehicle Act Nothing but extortion tool for police

The recent amendments made by the Union Government with respect to Motor Vehicle Act is a clear absurdity. It lacks the effective deliberations and wider consultations in order to make an effective policy.

It is very disturbing to learn that the current Modi 2.0 government which is marking reforms is always referring to what has happened in the last 70-years and its ill thought process. However, it is pertinent to notice that the people of this country have given a clear mandate to set the things right and corrected.

Referring to the Motor Vehicle 1988 Act, the Union Minister Nitin Gadkari stated that the MV Act 88 was outdated and no longer useful to the current scenario. But there arises a contradiction with his statement referring to the old one, the Union Government has however made the same way of approach, i.e imposition of hefty penalties even after the results/records stated that hefty penalties did not help in anyways in desired road safety and management.

The Union Government before asking the State governments to adopt the Act, there are few clarifications which needs to be addressed. On behalf of tax-payers and citizens of this country I would like to bring the below mentioned apprehensions and understand the same.

For any policy developments there needs to be a lot of deliberations and wider consultations from different approaches as each State has its own issues, but it is very unfortunate that the Centre has made zero involvement of State run Governments and now asking to Adopt the same is a dictatorship approach.

Neither the technology nor the human resources are sufficient to tackle the traffic management across the country. In such scenario how would the government ensure to maintain the all the violations are recorded thoroughly and penalties are accounted in a transparent manner?

What is the specific Action Plan of Government and how these intended hefty penalties are to be spent, as the citizens always complain about worst roads and poor infrastructure?

How this new Act and imposition of heavy penalties would be helpful to stop the prevailing deep-rooted corruption and the harassment of ground level authorities?

As everyone is aware of private transportation are part of the syndicate and operate in Mafia mode above any Traffic Rules and Administration. How is this going to be fixed?

As most of the State-run RTCs have worst maintenance and record of violations. How would the government ensure on this part?

Coming to RTA Offices, it is an open fact that there is huge corruption involved and ill practices are made. Without correcting its own flaws and streamlining the basic problem, how is it justified/fair for Government to impose huge penalties on citizens for not having licence? In such circumstances how would these penalties help ?

What is the assurance to the citizens that these increased penalties are well maintained with zero corruption and have high Accountability and Transparency in RTA Offices ?

In most of the cities there are no proper parking facilities which is leading to severe traffic congestion due to incorrect, wrong parking. How these penalties help to solve the issue.

Look for better ways of traffic management like creating effective public transportation systems, providing required traffic facilities, bringing accountability and transparency in the RTA offices and traffic police departments, including citizens in the traffic eco system.

The more you penalise and the more you impose the more there is scope for Corruption and Harassment on Roads. If the Government believes that just by raising the penalties it can fix the problem then it is absolutely their foolishness.

– Shashidhar Vuppala, Hyderabad