Motorists who fail to pay traffic challans after they attain finality may soon be barred from accessing key vehicle and driving licence-related services, according to draft amendments to the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989, issued by the Union road transport ministry. The proposal also mandates time-bound electronic adjudication of traffic violations and prescribes penalties for officials who delay decisions.
Event Context
The draft rules propose that once a challan has attained finality—either because it was not contested within the prescribed period or after adjudication—and remains unpaid, licensing and registering authorities will not process applications relating to the offender’s driving licence or the vehicle’s registration until the challan is disposed of.
The vehicle will also be flagged as “Not to be Transacted” on the portal, while the registered owner or licence holder will receive electronic alerts. The restriction, however, will not apply while a challan is pending before a court or adjudicating authority, and applications relating to vehicle tax will continue to be processed.
The proposed amendments are part of a wider overhaul of the digital traffic enforcement framework under the Central Motor Vehicles Rules. The Centre has invited objections and suggestions on the draft for 30 days before notifying the final rules.
Former National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) official and Indian Telecommunication Service (ITS) president Akhilesh Srivastava said, “We digitised the challan; now we must digitise accountability for citizens and officials alike. Linking RC and licence services to unpaid fines finally gives enforcement teeth, but the ₹5,000 penalty on tardy adjudicators is the real headline. India has rarely legislated consequences for its own machinery.”
“Having built FASTag’s back end at NHAI, I can say the hard part was never the citizen-facing rules. It’s the interoperability between challan portals, court records and vehicle databases. If that plumbing isn’t seamless, ‘Not to be Transacted’ will punish honest motorists caught in system lag, not offenders. Get the architecture right, and this is India’s template for the first real move toward accountable, real-time traffic enforcement,” he added.
States will have to appoint adjudicating authorities for every district or part thereof, create facilities for electronic hearings, including video conferencing, and ensure that orders are issued within 30 days of the hearing. Appeals against such orders will lie before an appellate authority of at least the rank of an additional district magistrate or equivalent, which must also dispose of appeals within 30 days.
The draft also proposes penalties for officials handling such cases. If an adjudicating or appellate authority fails to pronounce an order or dispose of an appeal within the prescribed time, it may face a penalty ranging from ₹5,000 to ₹10,000.
The ministry has also proposed giving legal recognition to electronic traffic warnings. Instead of remaining informal, warnings issued for violations under the Motor Vehicles Act or the rules will be digitally recorded on the portal and counted as previous violations while determining repeat offences. Such warnings will attain finality if accepted or after a representation against them is rejected.
Separately, the draft introduces an electronic process for cancellation of vehicle registrations where a vehicle has been destroyed, rendered permanently incapable of use, scrapped through a registered vehicle scrapping facility, or permanently removed from India. Owners will have to intimate the registering authority electronically, generally within 30 days of the event, following which the authority will notify both the owner and the insurer if the registration is cancelled. New Forms 37A and 37B have been proposed for the process.
The draft also proposes several procedural amendments, including extending one compliance period under the rules from 14 days to 30 days, expanding references to penalties and fines in relevant provisions, and clarifying procedures for compoundable and non-compoundable offences.
Match Outlook
The proposal also states that every state government will be required to establish a dedicated adjudication mechanism for traffic penalties within six months of the rules coming into force.
