Hyderabad: Traffic police in tri-commissionerates have decided to create awareness among vehicle owners — including private travel bus operators and two-wheeler riders for having pending challans on their vehicles.
The move follows the recent Vemuri Kaveri bus mishap in Kurnool, where the vehicle involved had unpaid challans worth Rs 40,000. The incident prompted traffic police to coordinate with the road transport authority (RTA) officials to segregate pending challan data by vehicle category.
Madhapur traffic DCP T. Sai Manohar said in the case where vehicle owners accumulate an unusually high number of pending challans, the traffic wing may recommend to the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) to examine the matter for possible license suspension as per the Motor Vehicle Act. Traffic staff were instructed to visit certain residential localities purely for awareness and educate purposes to explain that clearing pending challans would help vehicle owners avoid future traffic related issues.
Rachakonda traffic DCP D. Srinivas said that since most private travel buses operate from Hyderabad and Cyberabad, coordination among the three commissionerates was crucial. “We are deploying special teams at key junctions to verify registration numbers and target operators with multiple violations. This will help clear long-pending challans on private buses as well as other vehicles,” he said.
RTA officials said they would work closely with traffic police to identify high-value violators under the Motor Vehicles Act. “In view of the Kurnool accident, we plan to categorise challan data by vehicle type and integrate it with traffic police databases. A proposal for government approval has already been submitted,” said Hyderabad RTA officer Purushotham Reddy.
Officials also said several travel buses registered in neighbouring states had pending challans in Telangana. The RTA is considering writing to the transport authorities of those states to suspend vehicle registrations or deny fitness certificates until dues are cleared. The traffic department is also planning to create technically skilled data teams and adopt new software to categorise challans vehicle-wise, reducing manual workload.
As many as 600 private travel operators have halted services after the RTA and traffic police intensified inspections across Telangana. Officials said around 500 buses operate daily between Hyderabad and Vijayawada. Following strict enforcement drives, nearly all of them have stopped operations after being found violating traffic and Motor Vehicle Act norms.
