It may be over a year that collection of fines for traffic rules violations has gone online but it is still catching many a citizen unawares. Police personnel manning the traffic guard desk at Bidhannagar North police station had admitted to The Telegraph Salt Lake on Saturday that three out of 10 people still landed up to collect their driving licences without having made the payment on the Government Receipt Portal System (GRIPS) or taken a printout of the receipt, as they are supposed to. 

But that was supposedly the last day that people faced this harassment. From Monday, a helpdesk has been set up at every traffic guard under the Bidhannagar Commissionerate. “This is an e-kiosk to help people who are clueless about the online payment procedure or lack access to the net, especially senior citizens. The commissioner had asked us last week to set up some kind of mechanism,” said Kunal Barnabas, assistant commissioner of police, traffic. “People have to possess some instrument of online payment like ATM card or net banking. Then we can fill in the rest of the details on their behalf and the process can be completed on the spot and the driving licence returned.”

If someone lacks any instrument of online payment, officials at the desk are handing a non-paid challan bearing a Government Reference Number (GRN) against which one can go and deposit the fined amount at any nationalised bank. “The GRN is essential as we cannot accept cash payment,” said an official at the traffic guard. 

Barnabas points out that if the GRIPs website wbifms.gov.in/GRIPS is slow, payments can also be made at wbtrafficpolice.com. “It will redirect to the GRIPS website at some point but the payment gateway is separate.” 

But people who are net savvy would be expected to do the needful by themselves. “We cannot possibly cater to everyone. One has to understand that we are not the revenue collecting agency.” 

Traffic court

A traffic Lok Adalat will be held at the additional chief judicial magistrate’s court in  Mayukh Bhavan on July 8. This is the second time such a court is being held in recent memory. “This is meant to clear long pending non-FIR and citation cases across the state. We plan to hold such Lok Adalats every couple of months,” said Barnabas.