LAHORE, March 31: More than 100,000 cases of traffic violations registered under the previous system still await their disposal by courts.

The previous traffic violation system was replaced with the new ticket system in the first week of January, leaving some 110,029 cases of traffic violations with courts. A few thousand of them have been disposed of in the last couple of months.

Under the previous system, violators of the law had to present himself before a court that would impose a penalty on them according to the nature of the offence or the type of the vehicle.

Magistrate Syed Sajid Tirmizi told Dawn on Wednesday that under the previous system the courts did not require the summoning of the violators and were competent to dispose of cases of traffic violations in a year’s time. Hence, he said, the courts still had 10 months under the law to dispose of the cases pending with them.

He said about 10 people visited a court everyday for the recovery of their papers since the launch of the new ticket system. Thus, he added, half of the backlog would be cleared in 10 months.

Answering a question as to why the people were not much interested in recovering their papers deposited by them, he said most of them had either “got duplicate papers or had left ID cards with the enforcers of the law which were of no use for them”.

Though the previous system has ceased to exist, the touts continue to roam about the corridors and police branch of the courts. They demand between Rs30 and Rs70 for quick disposal of the papers. Most people readily pay the money to avoid the hassles of the cumbersome procedure or get the amount of penalty reduced.

On the other hand, in the first month of the ticket system the number of violators booked by the traffic police has decreased by 17,929 as compared to the corresponding period last year.

Lahore SSP Col Zaheerul Hasan says the police are issuing only one ticket for one or more violations which is a major factor for the reduction in the number of the traffic violation cases. He says the violators were being penalized only for one offence even if they had committed more than that. “It is because our purpose is to spread awareness among the people instead of penalizing them,” he said.