Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath asks Bengaluru traffic commissioners if politicians get challans: ‘Yeah, they do’

In his latest podcast, Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath asked Bengaluru traffic commissioners if politicians who break traffic signals get challans. During the candid interaction with Commissioner of Police (Traffic) B Dayananda and Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) MN Anucheth, the billionaire entrepreneur tried to understand traffic-related issues in the city and how they can be solved.

Replying to the question on whether politicians breaking the signals get challans, B Dayananda said, “Yeah, they do. They keep paying because the driver has to.”

Anucheth added, "The policy here is that nothing will be changed unless there is a wrongly raised challan, which is an extremely rare case now."

On VIPs breaking traffic rules

On being asked if it's right for VIPs to break lines or violate traffic rules, Dayananda replied, “I would rephrase the question as whether they should enjoy this preferential movement. For a person holding the position of chief minister, or even the governor or the prime minister, it becomes all the more necessary.”

"It's not a matter of, you know, a show-off kind of a thing, but it becomes a matter of necessity; he has to move. Plus, security concerns also matter. Most of these individuals have a high security threat perception. From that perspective also, it has to be ensured that they get free movement. Otherwise, en route, something can happen," he added.

How cameras catch traffic violations

Explaining how cameras catch traffic violations, Anucheth showed the smart enforcement centre and explained the two key tools – ITMS (Intelligent Enforcement Management System) and personnel checking the challans.

Speaking about ITMS, Anucheth said, “These are basically AI-based cameras which are at important junctions, which detect seven types of violations – like not wearing a seatbelt, not wearing a helmet. The violations are automatically raised. We have human validators here who are validating the accuracy of that challan that is raised.”

He added that every challan raised is checked, which helps with machine learning.

When asked how many challans are generated per day, Anucheth replied, " About 30,000 violations are generated, of which 20,000 are challaned."

Anucheth also said that the department takes four kinds of photo evidence, including number plates. “What happens is, because of this, we are able to annotate and give it back to the system as well to do the learning.”