Mumbai: Traffic police in Mumbai collected a whopping ₹205 crore from motorists in the past five years for violating traffic rules, HT reported yesterday. Now, it has come to light that many government vehicles, including some owned by the traffic police that issued e-challans for violations, are guilty of violating the same norms. Top officials in the state, including the chief minister, the deputy chief minister, and the police commissioner of Mumbai feature in the defaulters list, HT found, but not a single one among them has been penalised.

HT clicked photos of 70 government vehicles between October 23 and November 29. These included vehicles used by ministers, senior officials and the police. Registration numbers of these vehicles were then fed into MParivahan, the official database for vehicle registration and compliance, to check if they had valid PUC (pollution under control) and fitness certificates.

Traffic police routinely ask for these two documents from motorists during routine checks. The penalty for not having a valid PUC is ₹500 for first-time offenders and ₹1500 for repeat offenders. Lack of a valid fitness certificate attracts a fine of ₹2,000 and ₹5,000 for first-time and repeat offenders respectively; it is applicable to drivers as well as owners.

Analysis of MParivahan data showed that only eight out of the 70 vehicles had both PUC and fitness certificates valid till 2024. PUC certificates had expired for 30 vehicles, including those used by chief minster Eknath Shinde, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Mumbai police commissioner Vivek Phansalkar – all three vehicles were snapped outside the Sahyadri guest house on November 29. Additionally, nine mobile vans owned by Mumbai police did not have fitness certificates.

Records showed that none of these high-profile violators or the other offenders in the list were penalised even once. This was despite explicit orders to the traffic police to fine all vehicles which did not have valid PUC certificates, especially after the recent High Court order mandating air pollution mitigation measures. A traffic police official told HT that after the court order, they were given a target of fining at least 15 vehicles every day for not having PUC certificates.

M Ramkumar, additional commissioner of police (traffic), too claimed that the officers on the field are told to penalise all vehicles irrespective of whether they belong to the government or private parties. “If you have the list of vehicles which do not have fitness certificates and PUCs, please forward it to us so that action can be taken against them,” said Ramkumar.

Transport commissioner Vivek Bhimanwar and joint commissioner of police (traffic) Praving Padwal claimed that sometimes, data on the MParivahan portal is not updated. “But the traffic police and the transport department are liable to check if their vehicles have valid PUC and fitness certificates,” said Padwal.