City police begins zero tolerance drive to reduce traffic violation in the capital on Tuesday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, May 10: The city police will have zero tolerance zones from today onwards as far as traffic violations are concerned. The focus will be on major intersections.

While AG square is the first to be declared a ‘zero tolerance zone’ by the police, Rajmahal, Vani Vihar, Power House, Acharya Vihar and CRP Square would soon be added to the list.

According to the police, with the declaration of zero tolerance zone, violators can be slapped with a minimum fine of Rs 500 instead of the earlier fine amount of Rs 100.

The fine would be collected under Orissa Urban Police Act.

A senior police officer said they would install hoardings and banners at such traffic junctions to educate people about the new rules. “The traffic violators would henceforth be strictly dealt with and we will have zero tolerance towards them,” said a police officer.

At present, the city has more than 47 traffic junctions where traffic cops have been deployed to ease heavy traffic flow. Sources said that there would be 10 more junctions where traffic police would be deployed in the coming days.

The traffic police sources said that prior to the formal declaration of zero tolerance zones, they had been implementing similar programme at AG Square on a trial basis since last Saturday. More than 240 violators have been fined Rs 500 each under Orissa Urban Police Act in the area.

The violations, such as not wearing helmets, triple riding, reckless driving, signal violation, touching zebra crossing, driving on the wrong side, talking on mobile phone while driving, not tying the seatbelts and overloading by the auto-rickshaw drivers would be dealt with strictly in these zones.

As per the city police data the number of motor accidents had risen from 918 in 2009 to 929 in 2010 in the twin cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. Sources said that in 2010, 617 accidents had been reported in Bhubaneswar in which 190 people were killed and 553 injured.

In the first three months of 2011, 146 motor vehicle accidents were reported in Bhubaneswar.

In the annual crime meeting, commissioner of police B.K. Sharma had said that rash driving inside the city, particularly by the youngsters, increased the rate of accidents. He had also pointed that the police were taking several steps to curb such rash driving and traffic rule violations. This zero tolerance zone is another such step to curb such violators with an iron hand.

According to officials, besides the two or three traffic cops deployed at various traffic squares to manage the traffic, there would be four more policemen to keep a watch on violators at four directions of the junctions.

People found violating traffic rules, would be taken to the nearest traffic police station and fined. At far off places such as Nalco Square and Vani Vihar Square, a police inspector would be deployed to collect the fine.

“The squares have been so perfectly chosen that the violators cannot escape from the police,” said a traffic police officer.

The citizens have accepted the move positively, but they are not sure about the future of such a plan.

“Several such steps have been taken in the past to curb traffic violators, but nothing seems to be working for long,” said Amar Kanhar, a state government employee.