Truckers, owners pay Rs 48,000 crore a year in bribes

Truck drivers and fleet owners shell out around Rs 48,000 crore annually as bribes to traffic or highway police, a recent study has shown.

The study conducted by SaveLife Foundation, a not-for-profit entity, was carried out across 10 major transport and transit hubs. The report released by junior minister for road transport V K Singh claimed that at an all-India level, two-thirds (67%) of the drivers admitted to having bribed traffic or highway police personnel on the road.

Among the transport hubs included in the study, Guwahati fared the worst, where 97.5% of drivers claimed that they had paid bribes. This was followed by Chennai (89%) and Delhi (84.4%).

Over 82% respondents admitted to having bribed “officials of one or the other department on the road” during their last trip, revealing the rampant corruption in the sector. Even local groups like “puja samitis” extort from truckers before allowing them to cross informal checkposts, with a quarter of the drivers paying them cash.

Overall, the bribe paid was estimated at Rs 1,257 per trip.

Even bribing RTO officials was also found be an unwritten norm for truckers, with nearly 44% respondents confirming the same. In Bengaluru, their share was 94%, followed by 93.4% in Guwahati.

The report has exposed that a large share of drivers (47%) admitted to having paid bribes for renewal of their driving licences. Nearly 93% of the respondents from Mumbai claimed that they had to pay a bribe for this, followed by Guwahati (83%) and Delhi-NCR (78%).

While on an average a driver paid Rs 1,789 for renewal of licence, in Delhi the bribe amount was the maximum at Rs 2,025. Even 43% of the fleet owners claimed to have paid bribes (average of Rs 1,360) to the transport department for registration of their vehicles, the report noted.