This is the story of two men hailing from different professional backgrounds but having a common aim to make people aware of the law and order. They encouraged and are still campaigning against several social problems and corruption. Sunderlal Mandawat, a senior advocate of Udaipur and Mahesh Jain a social worker.

Sunder Lal Mandawat a senior and well known advocate of Udaipur started his mission against  irregularities of traffic and RTO authorities in 1992, since then Mr. Mandawat is fighting continuously with many similar issues, one among them was the subject of wearing helmet in Udaipur.

It would be wrong to say that Mr. Mandwat is against the law of helmet but he is against the irregularities of Traffic Police and RTO in terms of wrongly fining citizens and harrasing them by seizing their vehicles.

Mr. Mandawat first tried to get the stay order from court in the year 1995 then again in the year 2002.

Mr. Mahesh Jain, an automobile dealer by occupation, is also a well known socialist who started fighting for the rights of citizens. He founded Jan Jagran Samiti two years back. Both, Mr. Mandawat and Mr. Jain later came together with common platform for their noble cause and named it “Mewar Sangharsh Samiti”.

Mr. Mandawat said that more than 90% people don’t know the law and this is the worst thing going on. People are not aware of anything. The following laws of Motor Vehicle Act are least known to the common man and hence, they suffer.

1. According to Motor Vehicle Act, traffic police has no right to charge fine or making a chalan or to seize the vehicle of person riding two-wheeler without wearing helmet.
2. There is no offense if the person, if for some reason vehicle owner/driver is not able to produce the documents of the vehicle like registration, license, insurance certificate etc. Police has no right to harass the owner or seize the vehicle. Instead there is a provision that time is to be granted to the owner/driver to present those documents before the concerned authorities; and if they are found to be valid ones, then, there is no question of filing any complaint against the person. (motor vehicle act 139)
3. According to motor vehicle act 213 Transport Authority has right to take action against all the traffic offenses.
4. There are laws which allows both traffic and transport authority to take action. However, in case of helmets the word “police officer” has not been mentioned in Rajasthan Law 8.28 formed under motor vehicle act 129. Hence, police department has no right to make chalans.
5. According to RTI act every citizen has the right to ask about the actions being taken by the police officer or the concerned authority without any hesitation.
6. As per the order issued by Civil and Judicial Magistrate Udaipur in favor of case no. 178/05 ( dated 21-09-2007) police has no right to cease a vehicle or charge a fine if a person is found riding the vehicle without wearing helmet.
7. Issuing a chalan and compounding are two different things, and police has may have right of compounding but not of issuing chalan. In case your vehicle is seized by police you should ask for a “seizer memo” or in case of a fine, the receipt should clearly mention “fine” or in hindi “jurmana”

We hope these laws will help you know your rights and save you from being cheated/harassed. Be aware, follow the rules, drive safely!