Traffic courts abolished in Delhi

New Delhi: All the 13 traffic courts, which have a pendency of over 55,000 cases in the national capital, have been abolished by the Delhi High Court with effect from September 11.

These pending traffic rule violation cases would now be taken up as regular matters by regular magisterial courts.

Court sources said the decision was taken in view of several complaints from some of the magistrates posted in the traffic courts for a long time.

The sources, most of them associated with the administrative function of the courts, said these magistrates had expressed their desire to be brought into the mainstream magisterial work and sought a change in their profile.

However, the official reason for the decision has been attributed to efforts to bring about more transparency in the judicial system and make traffic-related cases more litigant- friendly by shifting them to regular courts. All the traffic courts are located in the six districts courts of Delhi.

Registrar General of Delhi High Court, Dinesh Kumar Sharma told PTI that Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal has decided to abolish these 13 courts to facilitate litigants and ease the rush due to which they were facing difficulties.

"Cases of traffic challans were concentrated in one court per district which was causing delay in disposal of cases.

"Now, these cases will proceed in regular magisterial courts as regular matters to ensure their early disposal," he said, adding that this order will come into effect from September 11.

He said earlier also, there were no designated traffic courts which were set up later.

"The move is aimed at making the system more transparent and more efficient," Sharma said, adding the judicial officers of these traffic courts have been transferred to regular magisterial courts.

The high court recently issued an administrative order saying, "all the 13 traffic courts stands abolished," and "all the cases pending in the 13 abolished traffic courts shall be assigned by the concerned District and Sessions Judge to the courts of metropolitan magistrates."

As per the official data available on the courts website, as on July 1, 2017, there are over 12000, 2200, 5500, 3900, 7300 cases pending in traffic courts of five districts — Central, West, New Delhi, South and South East — respectively.

In mid-2016, there were over 2100, 2300, 20,000 traffic challan cases pending in East, North East and South West districts respectively, according to the court data. The figures of North and North West districts could not be gathered.

Till now, there was one traffic court each in Central, West, New Delhi, South, East, North East, North West and West districts. South East and South West districts had two and three traffic courts respectively.

The traffic challan cases of Central and West districts, which fell under Tis Hazari district court, would be assigned to four and three magistrates respectively.

Similarly, in Saket district court, the challan cases of South and South East districts will be distributed to four and seven magistrates respectively.

While four magistrates of Patiala House Court will try the challan cases of New Delhi district, six magistrates will do so in Dwarka district court for South West district.

The work of two abolished traffic courts in East and North East districts would be taken up by two and three magistrates respectively in Karkardooma district court.

In the Rohini district court, the cases would be distributed between five and six magistrates of North West and North Delhi district respectively.