Traffic Rule Violation Penalties under Motor Vehicle Amendment Bill – 2016

Press Information Bureau 
Government of India
03-August-2016

Cabinet approves Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016 Historical Step towards making roads safe and save lakhs of innocent lives 

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its approval for Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016.  The Amendment aims to improve

Every year 5 lakh road accidents are reported in the country in which 1.5 lakh people lose their lives.  Government is committed to reduce the accidents and fatalities by 50% in five years.

To address the issue of road safety, a draft Road Transport & Safety Bill was prepared soon after NDA Government came to power.  However, most of the States have expressed reservations.

To address the issue of road safety and to improve the facilitation of the citizens while dealing with transport departments, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways constituted a Group of Transport Ministers (GoM) of the States.  TheGoM headed by Sh. Yoonus Khan, Hon. Transport Minister of Rajasthan held three meetings.  A total of 18 Transport Ministers from different political parties participated in these meetings and they have submitted three interim reports. 

The GoM recommended that to address the pressing issue of road safety and improving transport scenario, Government should immediately bring amendments to the present Motor Vehicle Act. On the basis of recommendations of the GoM and other pressing requirements, MoRTH introduced the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016 for consideration of the Cabinet. Today Cabinet Chaired by Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the bill.

In the present Motor Vehicle Act, there are 223 Sections out of which the Bill aims to amend 68 sections whereas Chapters 10 has been deleted and a Chapter 11 is being replaced with new provisions to simplify third party insurance claims and settlement process.

The important provisions include increase in compensation for Hit & Run cases from Rs. 25000 to Rs. 2 lakhs. It also has provision for payment of compensation upto Rs 10 lakh in road accidents fatalities.  

The Bill also proposes insertion of 28 new sections. The amendments mainly focus on issues relating to improving road safety, citizens’ facilitation while dealing with the Transport Department. Strengthening rural transport, last mile connectivity and public transport, automation and computerization and enabling online services. 

The Bill propose to improve the transport scenario in the country by permitting the States to grant exemptions in Stage carriage and contract carriage permits for promoting rural transport, public transport, last mile connectivity and for passenger convenience and road safety. 

The Bill proposes that the State Government can specify a multiplier, not less than one and not greater than ten, to be applied to each fine under this Act and such modified fine.

The bill proposes that the State Government can regulate the activities in a public place of pedestrians and such means of transport.

Improving delivery of services to the stakeholders using e-Governance is one of the major focuses of this Bill.  This include enabling online learning licenses, increasing validity period for driving licenses,  doing away with the requirements of educational qualifications  for transport licenses are some of the features.

The Bill proposes offences committed by Juveniles.   The Guardian / owner shall be deemed to be guilty in cases of offences by the Juveniles and Juvenile to be tried under JJ Act. Registration of Motor Vehicle to be cancelled

To improve the registration process for new vehicles, registration at the end of the dealer is being enabled and restrictions have been imposed on temporary registration. 

In the area of road safety, bill proposes to increase penalties to act as deterrent against traffic violations.  Stricter provisions are being proposed in respect of offences like juvenile driving, drunken driving, driving without licence, dangerous driving, over-speeding, overloading etc.  Stricter provisions for helmets have been introduced along with provisions for electronic detection of violations.  To help the road accident victims, Good Samaritan guidelines have been incorporated in the Bill.  The Bill also proposes to mandate the automated fitness testing for the transport vehicles with effect from 1^st October 2018.  This would reduce corruption in the Transport Department while improving the road worthiness of the vehicle.  The penalties are also proposed for deliberate violation of safety/environmental regulations as well as body builders and spare part suppliers.

To bring harmony of the registration and licensing process, it is proposed to create National Register for DrivingLicence and National Register for Vehicle registration through “Vahan” & “Sarathi” platforms. This will facilitate uniformity of the process across the country. 

The process for testing and certification for automobiles is proposed to be regulated more effectively.  The testing agencies issuing automobile approvals have been brought under the ambit of the Act.

The driving training process has been strengthened enabling faster issuance of transport licenses.  This will help in reducing the shortage of commercial drivers in the country.

To facilitate transport solutions for Divyang, the bottlenecks have been removed in respect of grant of driving licenses as well as alterations in the vehicles to make it fit for use of Divyang.

 Hon’ble Transport Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari has termed the Motor vehicle (Amendment) 2016 passed by cabinet as biggest reforms in the Road Safety & transport sector.  He has expressed his gratitude to Hon’ble Prime Minister for his guidance & Support. He has also expressed his special appreciation for the efforts put in by Group of State Transport Ministers to formulate these amendments.   He has also expressed his confidence that parliament shall take up the amendments next week and has appealed to all parties to support the bill which a step in right direction to provide safe & public friendly transport eco system

Proposed Amendments in Various Penalties under Motor Vehicle Amendment Bill – 2016

Section		Old Provision / Penalty	New Proposed Provision / Minimum Penalties
177	General	Rs 100	Rs 500
New 177A	Rules of road regulation violation	Rs 100	Rs 500
178	Travel without ticket	RS 200	Rs 500
179	Disobedience of orders of authorities	Rs 500	Rs 2000
180	Unauthorized use of vehicles without licence	Rs 1000	Rs 5000
181	Driving without licence	Rs 500	Rs 5000
182	Driving despite disqualification	Rs 500	Rs 10,000
182 B	Oversize vehicles	New	Rs 5000
183	Over speeding	Rs 400	Rs 1000 for LMV Rs 2000 for Medium passenger vehicle
184	Dangerous driving penalty	Rs 1000	Upto Rs 5000
185	Drunken driving	Rs 2000	Rs 10,000
189	Speeding / Racing	Rs 500	Rs 5,000
192 A	Vehicle without permit	upto Rs 5000	Upto Rs 10,000
193	Aggregators (violations of licencing conditions)	New	Rs 25,000 to Rs 1,00,000
194	Overloading	Rs 2000 and Rs 1000 per extra tonne	Rs 20,000 and Rs 2000 per extra tonne
194 A	Overloading of passengers		Rs 1000 per extra passenger
194 B	Seat belt	Rs 100	Rs 1000
194 C	Overloading of two wheeler's	Rs 100	Rs 2000, Disqualification for 3 months for licence
194 D	Helmets	Rs 100	Rs 1000 Disqualification for 3 months for licence
194 E	Not providing way for emergency vehicles	New	Rs 10,000
196	Driving Without Insurance	RS 1000	Rs 2000
199	Offences by Juveniles	New	Guardian / owner shall be deemed to be guilty. Rs 25,000 with 3 yrs imprisonment. For Juvenile to be tried under JJ Act. Registration of Motor Vehicle to be cancelled
206	Power of Officers to impound documents		Suspension of driving licenses u/s 183, 184, 185, 189, 190, 194C, 194D,194E
210 B	Offences committed by enforcing authorities		Twice the penalty under the relevant section

MULLAPERIYAR DAM - HISTORY

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MULLAPERIYAR DAM:

The Periyar dam is the first Surkhi concrete dam in a “V” shaped gorge in the Western Ghats over the west flowing Periyar River. This Periyar River is a perennial river which rises from the Sivagiri group of hills in Kerala state and flows through Kerala state and joins the Arabian sea. Out of its total catchment of 4976 sq.km only 114sq.km at the origin of the river lies in Tamil Nadu. It is built of concrete in Surkhi motor (brick powder in lime) with a thick masonry facing and is 173m high above foundation rock with a base width of 144.5ft Its length is 200ft at foundation level and 1241 ft at top. On both sides of the main valley there are smaller depressions and the one on the left side was blocked by a second dam of the same time with 221ft length and 53ft height which is connected with the high ground by means of an earthen dam. The depression on the right flank is utilized as an escape channel and it was originally cut down to a level 11ft below the crest of the main dam and it functions as an open weir escape for discharge of flood flows. But doubts were expressed about the spillway capacity during heavy floods and in 1908 the level of the escape was reduced by 8ft and a regulator was constructed upon it with 10 spans each of 36ft width, fitted with gates of 16ft height. There is an extremely huge quantity of Dead Storage provided merely to raise the remainder water to the level at which it can be passed through the tunnel into the Eastern side of the river basin watershed. The level of the sluice through which the water drawn by the Tamil Nadu is 48ft below the crest of the dam which leaves a Dead Storage water depth of 125ft When full, the lake holds 15.661 TMC of water out of which 9.176 TMC is utilizable as it is lying above the level of the sluice. From the Northern most arm of the reservoir the water is led for about a mile through a deep open cut channel and then through a tunnel of 5700ft length into another open cut channel on Eastern side of Western Ghats which leads into the Surulivar rivulet which discharges into Vaigai river. After irrigating about 1,27,000 acres in the Surulivar river valley the water is picked up at the Perani regulator across the Vaigai river about 80 miles downstream of the tunnel and flows into the Periyar main canal of 35 miles length. The main canal of 35 miles length is 100ft wide at its head and discharges 2000 cusecs of water. The rainfall occurs in 4 out of 5days during June to November when the rain is practically continuous. Sudden floods from 10,000 to 1,20,000 cusecs are constantly experienced during most of the year. Sometimes 3 inches of rain is recorded in a period of 4 hours ,resulting in heavy floods. The project sanctioned in 1884 and started in 1887 was completed by 1897. Where formerly 66,000 acres of land in Tamil Nadu was irrigated from scanty and unreliable water sources 1,85,000 acres was provided with unfailing water supply at a cost of Rs.1.048 crores and the project returns about 6% on capital outlay and proved a financial success.

ENSURING SAFETY OF THE DAM WITHOUT JEOPARDISING INTERESTS OF BOTH STATES

In order to resolve the controversy between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, a scientific assessment of the problem must be made from several aspects

The probability of failure of a dam depends on factors like seismicity of the area, spillway capacity, nature of foundations, seismic design quality of construction, and feasibility of disaster management, bombing by terrorists or enemy countries. About 10% of the dams failed in India and abroad and about 2% of them are reported to have collapsed. The Valiant dam in Italy failed in 1963 due to the collapse of the mountain slopes around the reservoir basin due to a series of medium earthquakes. Some dams in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra and Karnataka have also collapsed. About 2000 dams have been identified by the US experts as unsafe and it is estimated to cost $1000 million to rehabilitate them. Under the dam Safety Acts in USA and Canada, the risk analyses and dam-break scenarios are used as tools to assess the hazard potential of a dam as it provides firstly the data required for scientific estimation of spill way capacity and secondly to predict the flood wave depth and flood wave arrival times for identifying the villages and towns that could be drowned by the flash floods due to the collapse of the dam. Thus flood management in preventive terms means dam safety and in protective terms flood plains management. According to the International Standards (ICOLD –57, Bulletin46) seismic safety of the dam ensures that firstly the dam does not suffer significant damage due to an anticipated earthquake and secondly the damage to the dam is limited and no catastrophic failure occurs leading to uncontrolled release of water due to a maximum credible earthquake.While studying the Environmental safety of Mulaperiyar dam, two expert committees, one appointed by the Kerala state and another by the union Government presented contradictory recommendations on safety aspects of the dam. A perusal of Newspaper reports on the findings of Expert Committee of the Central Government indicates that the report gives a false impression about the safety of Mulaperiyar dam and naturally the farmers of Tamil Nadu have become suspicious about the genuine grave concerns of Kerala on the colossal environmental damaging impacts consequent to the proposed increase in the height from 136ft to 152 ft of the century-old Mulaperiyar dam. Safety and Environmental hazards of Mullaperiyar and other dams like Iddukki are questions of life and death to Kerala and such issues are too serious to be blindly left in the hands of Experts since they involve not only the technical but also the major social problems. Since most Keralites are intellectual giants, it is necessary to create proper environmental awareness on this controversial problem so that the people can safeguard their right to life and the environment as envisaged under section 51(A) of the constitution of India.

EPIC BROWSER

EPIC BROWSER : FOR THE INDIANS BY THE INDIANS

Epic is a web browser based on Mozilla Firefox developed by Hidden Reflex specifically customized to the taste of Indian users, which was released in July 2010. Similar to Flock, the browser has several preinstalled widgets such as social networking, chat clients and email facilities integrated into the browser. It is dubbed as the first web browser from India and also features the first integrated virus protection in a browser powered by ESET. It is the first web browser for India and world's only side bar application browser.

Epic is available as a free download which currently supports Microsoft Windows platform.

Direct free Download: http://www.epicbrowser.com/

Developer(s) : Hidden Reflex

Initial Release : July 15th 2010,(3 Months ago)

Stable Release : 1.0 July 15th 2010,(3 Months ago)

Operating System : Windows XP/ Vista / 7

Engine : Gecko (layout)

Website: www.epicbrowser.com

History

Epic was released on 15 July 2010. It is developed by Hidden Reflex, a software company founded by Alok Bharadwaj in 2008 which is based on Bangalore, India.

Features

Epic was designed specifically for Indian users. It is bundled with lots of apps like a transliteration for Indian scripts, a web snippet tool, timer, to do list, a full featured text editor, games, Google maps, clients for chatting, social networking such as Orkut, Facebook and Twitter, email apps, and several other installable web apps. It features a huge collection of themes and wall papers featuring subjects related to India. Epic is claimed to be the first web browser featuring built in anti virus and anti phishing protection. Epic is currently available for Windows, though Linux and Mac versions are also expected.

Epic claims there are over 1500 free applications that will work with the browser, as well as many themes and wallpapers.

Epic currently supports 12 Indian languages including Kannada, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Nepali, Tamil, Malayalam and Urdu. There's additional transliteration support for Arabic, Persian, Russian, and Greek. The Epic browser is expected to be a big hit among the Indian users.

The logo of Epic browser denotes the Indian tricolor flag (Saffron, White and Green) enveloping a sphere (the earth) in a tree like fashion. The browser also encompasses numerous Indian wallpapers and themes.

Download Epic browser and enjoy the new era of browsing.

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HQ Pictures Of Aranmula Boat Race 2010

Pictures Taken On 27 August 2010.