Ahmedabad: In yet another technical glitch in a state transport department project, this time in the e-detection portal, 9,741 challans were issued to commercial vehicles even though their insurance was valid. This led the transport commissioner’s office to issue an advisory on Friday to all Regional Transport Offices (RTO) in the state, asking them to verify the challans and send the corrected data to the head office.On April 1 this year, the state govt implemented an e-detection project, developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), at toll plazas, including on Sardar Patel Ring Road, to enforcemotor vehicle laws. Under e-detection system rules, “An e-challan on the Parivahan portal is to be issued to transport vehicles passing through these plazas with outdated documents like PUC, insurance, fitness, or permits,” said an official.The advisory states, “This is to inform you that an e-detection project has been implemented at toll plazas on national and state highways across the state of Gujarat to upgrade enforcement actions through technology.However, it has come to the attention of this office that between April 15 and April 17, e-challans were issued for vehicles under the e-detection project even when insurance was valid. It appears that during this period, 9,741 vehicles were issued challans solely for insurance reasons.” The office of the commissioner of transport directed the RTOs and assistant RTOs to verify the challans on the vehicle portal. “For vehicles where insurance was valid yet a challan was issued under e-detection, the incorrect challans should be marked as ‘wrong insurance challan issued’ in the remarks column, and the excel sheet should be sent to this office within two days.”Officials pointed out that this was the second such glitch. Earlier in 2024, it was revealed that for vehicles purchased between 2021 and 2022, the state transport department ‘blacklisted’ 10.5 lakh vehicles in Gujarat to ‘rectify’ its own mistake that led to a shortfall in the collection of temporary vehicle registration fees. In 2021, the ministry of road transport and highways had announced that 50% of the total registration cost of a vehicle will be collected as temporary registration fees, which comes to Rs 300 for cars and Rs 150 for two-wheelers. However, the provision to collect the hiked fees was not incorporated into the state transport department’s online system, leading to a collection shortfall of Rs 100 per car and Rs 50 per two-wheeler. The e-detection system, as a pilot project, applies to all toll plazas under the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and the roads and buildings department in the state and will be rolled out country-wide based on the outcomes and recommendations.