Telangana Sets Up Single Traffic Bureau to Cut Road Crashes, Tighten Enforcement

The Telangana government on Thursday ordered the establishment of the Telangana Traffic Management, Road and Rail Safety Bureau (TG-TMARS), a specialised wing of the State police that will oversee traffic enforcement across Telangana, patrol highways, investigate road crashes and supervise railway policing.

The bureau, headquartered in Hyderabad with jurisdiction across the State, will be headed by an officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police or Inspector General of Police. It will exercise oversight over traffic police stations and traffic wings in all police commissionerates and districts, while their day-to-day operational control will remain with the respective Commissioners and Superintendents of Police.

The government said Telangana has a road network exceeding 32,000 km and more than 1.8 crore registered vehicles. At present, traffic wings in commissionerates and districts function without a common command for standards, technology, training, analytics and review. The new bureau is intended to bring these functions under a single framework.

TG-TMARS will have two principal wings, one dealing with traffic and the other with road and rail safety. Its responsibilities will range from operating traffic signals and adaptive traffic control systems to coordinating traffic arrangements for major events, festivals and processions, and clearing obstructions, including vehicles encroaching on footpaths.

The road and rail safety wing will oversee electronic enforcement and the e-challan system, and coordinate drives against drunk driving, helmet and seat-belt violations, wrong-side driving, lane violations, speeding, overloading and unauthorised lights and hooters. Highway patrol units will cover National Highways, Expressways, the Outer Ring Road and notified State Highways.

A significant part of the new system will focus on road crashes. Every traffic and law and order police station will designate a Road Crash Response Officer to respond round the clock, secure accident scenes, facilitate the shifting of injured persons within the golden hour and ensure that crashes are entered on the eDAR platform. Fatal and grievous crashes will also be inspected by multi-departmental teams to identify factors involving the driver, the vehicle and the road, and to recommend measures to prevent recurrence.

Police stations with major traffic or road safety issues, and every police station having more than 50 km of National or State Highway in its jurisdiction, will have a Highway Patrol Unit comprising a head constable and a constable with a dedicated patrol vehicle. The units will be equipped with dashboard cameras, Automatic Number Plate Recognition and speed-detection devices, and connected to the e-challan system.

The bureau will also maintain a register of repeat and serial traffic offenders, offending fleets and syndicates, and use e-challan, crash and patrol data to identify violation hotspots, high-risk corridors, critical junctions, red spots and black spots. A dedicated technology wing will work on software development, artificial intelligence integrations and the adoption of enforcement technology.

A Vigilance, Standards and Compliance Cell will audit e-challan and enforcement operations as well as compliance with body-worn and dashboard cameras. It will also handle complaints against traffic personnel, anti-corruption vigilance and performance assessment of traffic wings and highway patrol units.

The order also provides for a State Traffic Training Academy to train personnel in traffic management, intelligent traffic systems, electronic enforcement, road crash response and investigation.

A separate Traffic Management Fund will receive 40 per cent of the compounding fees and fines collected by police under motor vehicle laws, apart from charges collected from organisers for traffic management at events and certain receipts from the Union Ministry of Railways. The money can be used for enforcement technology, body-worn and dashboard cameras and related purposes, according to the order.