Due To A Typo In Motor Vehicle Bill, You Can Still Get Away With Rs 100 Challan For No Helmet, Seatbelt

In an effort to make the Indian roads safer and bring down the road accident fatalities, which currently add up to around 1.5 lakh annually, Rajya Sabha passed the Motor Vehicle Amendments Bill on Wednesday.

With the new amendments in place, several offences like jumping traffic signals, use of mobile phones while driving, wrong passing or overtaking and even driving against the traffic will now be dealt with under the category of ¡®dangerous driving¡¯. Consecutively, the penalties for most of these offences, and others, have been raised multifold. However, there is still time before all these changes will be implemented by the enforcement authorities.

Why, you ask? Because the Bill presented in the Rajya Sabha had a typo!

Get this - the Motor Vehicle Amendments bill that passed the Lok Sabha votes earlier was not the same presented in the Rajya Sabha in the recent session. Senior Congress leader B.K Hariprasad was the one who highlighted the discrepancies, calling it ¡°a defective bill.¡±

Congress party then alleged that the centre was trying to deceive the Rajya Sabha with this flawed bill.

The allegations caused a stir amongst the ruling party, leading to a consultation between the ministers, as per a report by TOI. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari then took it upon himself to explain the defects in the bill. ¡°It was a printing mistake. I apologise for it,¡± he said.

He then brought an amendment to the bill as a correction.

(Representative Image: BCCL)

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The end result? The amended bill will now have to be passed by the Lok Sabha again before it is escalated to the president of India to be passed as a law. All this, after the bill was caught in the Upper House for almost two years.

That, however, does not mean that the bill will face any considerable delays further, since it has already got the approval from the Rajya Sabha with a majority vote of 108-13. It will take time to become a law though and till the time, the enforcement agencies have been instructed to ¡°not create panic by cracking down on people¡± by a senior ministry official.

A look at the amendments mentioned in the bill shows a multifold increase in the fines to be slapped on traffic rule violators. For instance, penalties for drunk driving has been increased to Rs 10,000, from a previous penalty of Rs 2,000 for the first offence. Driving without license will also incur a fine of Rs 5,000 + jail time for the first offence.

A notable addition in the new Motor Vehicle Bill is a penalty on those blocking an emergency vehicles on the roads. The fine for blocking an ambulance and like vehicles will be Rs 10,000 or a 6 months jail time or both. Some other penalties include -

+ specific Jail terms in some violations

The bill also mentions that the penalties are subject to a 10% increase annually if need be. If the law enforcers are found flouting the traffic rules, they will have to pay double the penalties of the offences mentioned here. Interestingly, the new Motor Vehicle Act also holds the contractors, consultants and civic agencies accountable for faulty design, construction or poor maintenance of roads which lead to accidents.

In addition, it also removes the cap on liability for third-party insurance which was earlier set at a maximum of Rs 10 lakh in case of death and Rs 5 lakh in case of grievous injury.

All the updates in the traffic rules followed on Indian roads and the corresponding penalties associated with their violation are aimed at reducing accidents and leading fatalities in the country. Apart from penalising the violators, the new law will also protect those helping road accident victims. Under the Good Samaritan act, those who come forward to help accident victims will be protected from any civil or criminal liability. It will be their choice whether to disclose their identity to the police or medical personnel or not.