Fine for overloading increased to Rs 2,000

The UP government has reintroduced the system of penalising truckers for overloading their trucks. The state government had earlier scrapped the compounding fee for overloading. The cabinet, which met here today, endorsed the proposal.

Briefing newspersons here, Chief Secretary Naveen Chandra Bajpayee said any vehicle detected as overloaded on the check points would have to pay Rs 2,000 as penalty for the first one tone overload and then Rs 1,000 for every additional tonne.

At present, as per the compounding fee system, the transporters were paying Rs 500 for the first additional one tonne and Rs 300 per tonne after that. Bajpayee said by reverting to the old formula, the state government would certainly earn huge revenue from the overloaders. ''This step has been taken to impose penalty on the transporters who are misusing the present system and were damaging the state roads,'' he added.

The cabinet also approved a proposal to hand over 3 acres of the irrigation department at Okhla to Noida, to be used for construction of approach road for the flyover connecting the Mayur Vihar in East Delhi with Noida. The cost of the land is around Rs 2.32 crore which will be paid to the department by the Noida.

In another decision, the state government waived off road tax on vehicles used by the Non-government organisations to carry children to 45 schools for handicapped and mentally retarded in the state. The state government also cleared a waiver of Rs 20 lakhs as guarantee fee to the UP Minority Finance Corporation for taking central loans to finance certain schemes for the benefit of the minority communities.

It also endorsed a proposal to provide free text books to all students from standard sixth to eight in government schools from the next academic session. The state government was already giving free text books to girls, schedule caste/scheduled tribe and OBC students from standard sixth to eight, but from now on all students, irrespective of caste or gender, will be provided the benefit.

With this decision, all the students of government schools will get free text books from standard sixth to eight, as announced by the Chief Minister in his Budget speech.

In another decision, the government decided to appoint 134 specialist doctors in government hospitals on contract basis. The doctors appointed for an year, will get Rs 15,500 per month for their daily six-hour services, but will have to shed Rs 500 for a day's absence.

The cabinet also endorsed the proposal for the fee to be charged for giving information to the public under the Right to Information Act. The rules for providing information under RTI were approved by the cabinet.

As per the cabinet decision here, fee of Rs 2 per copy would be charged for a question on normal paper size, while inspections of file would only be allowed on payment of Rs 10 for the first one hour and Rs 5 per fifteen minutes later one.

A person has to deposit Rs 50 for copying the documents in a floppy or CD while Rs 2 per question will be charged for the printed duplicate of any document. He said that people can deposit the fees in cash or give a bankers cheque for the purpose.