Few phrases in Indian legal conversation do as much work and carry as little meaning as “stay order”. People ask for one the way they would ask for a certificate, as though it were something a court keeps in a drawer. It is not. It is an order made inside a case, on a test with three limbs, and there are eleven situations in which it cannot be made at all. This page is about what courts actually grant, and about the two or three facts that decide it before anybody gets to the merits.
The phrase is used as though it names an object. People say they need a stay order the way they would say they need a birth certificate, and they ask how much it costs and how long it takes.
Neither question has an answer in that form, because a stay order is not issued, it is decided. A judge who already has your case in front of him forms a view, on three specific questions, about whether something should be stopped while the case runs. If the answer is yes, an order follows. There is no counter and no queue.
The provision is Order XXXIX of the Code of Civil Procedure, and it operates in a suit. An application for a temporary injunction is filed with the plaint or afterwards, in the same case, and the court decides it as an interlocutory matter.
So the question “can you get me a stay order” is really the question “what suit are we filing, and is it strong enough”. Anybody who offers the first without having answered the second is selling you the second page of a document whose first page does not exist.
Three practical consequences, and they shape everything below.
The injunction is judged on the case pleaded in the suit, so a thin plaint produces a weak application however urgently it is written. The relief in the application cannot be wider than the relief claimed in the suit. And the costs, the court, the limitation period and the timeline are the suit's, not the application's — which is why our page on limitation is worth reading before this one if the dispute is old.
Three requirements, all of which must be satisfied. They come from a 1991 judgment of the Supreme Court that is still the standard citation.
A substantial question, raised in good faith, which genuinely needs to be tried.
More harm from refusing the order than from granting it.
Harm that money at the end of the case cannot adequately repair.
“a substantial question raised, bona fide, which needs investigation and a decision on merits”
“there is a serious disputed question to be tried in the suit and that an act, on the facts before the court, there is probability of his being entitled to the relief asked for”
Dalpat Kumar v. Prahlad Singh, AIR 1993 SC 276 / (1992) 1 SCC 719, 16 December 1991 — K. Ramaswamy and G.N. Ray JJNotice how low and how high that bar is at once. You do not have to prove your case; a probability of being entitled to the relief is enough. But the question has to be substantial and raised bona fide, which means a claim constructed for the purpose of getting an order does not qualify, and a court that smells one will say so.
“the comparative hardship or mischief or inconvenience which is likely to occur from withholding the injunction will be greater than that would be likely to arise from granting it”
Dalpat Kumar v. Prahlad SinghA comparison, not an assertion. The application has to say what happens to the other side if the order is made, and argue that it is the smaller harm. Applications that pretend the other side has no interests at all read badly, and a court that has to work out the other side's position for itself usually works it out less favourably to you than you would have.
irreparable injury does not mean that there is “no physical possibility of repairing the injury, but means only that the injury must be a material one, namely one that cannot be adequately compensated by way of damages”
Dalpat Kumar v. Prahlad SinghThat is the sentence to read twice. The test is not how bad the harm is. The test is whether a court, at the end of the case, could put it right with money.
Because money loss is the paradigm of a reparable injury. It can be counted and it can be awarded. An applicant who says he will suffer a loss of a specific sum has, without meaning to, told the court exactly how it can be repaired.
Not that the applicant was in the wrong. That the harm described was the kind a decree for damages could cure. If the honest answer to “what happens if the court refuses” is “I will be out of pocket and will claim it later”, the injunction is unlikely, and a good advocate will say so before you spend money finding out.
Harm that cannot be undone or cannot be priced. Property being sold to a third party who will then have rights of his own. A structure being demolished or raised. A tree being cut. A unique thing — a particular piece of land, a specific chattel — being disposed of. A confidence being published. A person being dispossessed.
The thread is irreversibility. If, three years from now, a judgment in your favour could not put the world back the way it was, you are describing irreparable injury.
Order XXXIX does not leave it entirely at large. Rule 1 names the cases in which a temporary injunction may be granted.
“where any property in dispute in a suit is in danger of being wasted, damaged or alienated”
“where a defendant threatens, or intends to remove or dispose of his property with a view to defrauding his creditors”
“where a defendant threatens to dispossess the plaintiff or otherwise cause injury to the plaintiff in relation to any property in dispute”
Order XXXIX Rule 1, Code of Civil Procedure 1908And Rule 2 adds the case “where a defendant is about to commit a breach of contract, or other injury of any kind”, which is the provision most non-property injunctions run on.
Before the three-limb test is even reached, there is a gate. Section 41 of the Specific Relief Act 1963 lists eleven cases in which an injunction cannot be granted, and one of them was added as recently as 2018.
An injunction cannot be granted “to restrain any person from instituting or prosecuting any proceeding in a criminal matter”.
Section 41(d), Specific Relief Act 1963This is worth stating flatly because people spend real money on it. A civil court cannot stop a complaint, an FIR or a prosecution. The route against a criminal proceeding is a petition in the High Court under its own powers — a different court, a different law, a different proceeding. Our page on FIR registration deals with the criminal side, and arrest and bail with what follows.
An injunction cannot be granted “when equally efficacious relief can certainly be obtained by any other usual mode of proceeding except in case of breach of trust”.
Section 41(h), Specific Relief Act 1963This is the statutory cousin of the irreparable injury limb, and together they do most of the work. If there is an ordinary remedy that will certainly give you the same thing, the extraordinary one is not available. That is also why a complaint which really belongs in a consumer forum, a tribunal or an arbitration is a weak candidate for an injunction.
The eleventh clause is newer than the others and a great many summaries of section 41 still do not have it. It was inserted by the Specific Relief (Amendment) Act 2018.
An injunction cannot be granted “if it would impede or delay the progress or completion of any infrastructure project or interfere with the continued provision of relevant facility related thereto or services being the subject matter of such project”.
Section 41(ha), Specific Relief Act 1963, inserted in 2018The same amendment added a provision aimed squarely at the same thing:
“No injunction shall be granted by a court in a suit under this Act involving a contract relating to an infrastructure project specified in the Schedule, where granting injunction would cause impediment or delay in the progress or completion of such infrastructure project.”
Section 20A(1), Specific Relief Act 1963, inserted in 2018What counts as an infrastructure project is not left to argument: the Act carries a Schedule of categories and infrastructure sub-sectors, and the Central Government may amend it by notification, with the notification to be laid before Parliament.
Not only large contractors. The Schedule covers broad categories, so a dispute connected to a road, a transmission line, a water or sewerage project, a port or a similar work can run into this bar even where the person complaining is an individual with a perfectly real grievance.
If your dispute touches anything of that kind, this is the first question to settle and not the last, because no amount of prima facie case or irreparable injury gets past a statutory bar. Where it applies, the remedy is damages or another route, and knowing that on day one is worth more than finding it out at the hearing.
The three-limb test is a weighing exercise and a court can be persuaded. Section 41 is not. If your relief sits in one of the eleven clauses, the application does not fail narrowly on the merits — it cannot be granted at all. That is why reading section 41 before drafting anything is the cheapest half-hour in this subject.
Two words get used interchangeably and should not be.
A temporary injunction is what this page has been about: an interim order under Order XXXIX, made while the suit is pending, to hold the position. It can be varied, vacated or appealed, and it dies when the suit is decided.
A perpetual or permanent injunction is a final relief, granted by the decree at the end of the suit after the case has been tried. It is one of the things you ask for in the plaint, and it is what you are actually fighting for. A great many suits in India are titled suits for permanent injunction for exactly this reason.
The practical point: the interim order and the final relief are asked for in the same case but decided at opposite ends of it, on completely different material. Winning the first says very little about winning the second, and losing the first does not mean the suit is lost.
The default is that the other side is told before an injunction is granted. Rule 3 requires notice of the application to the opposite party, and the exception is narrow: where the object of granting the injunction would be defeated by delay.
Where the court does proceed without notice, two things follow. It must record its reasons for the opinion that delay would defeat the purpose. And the applicant must get the papers to the other side immediately.
This is what people mean by a same-day stay. The Supreme Court has set the tone for it:
“Power to grant injunction is an extraordinary power vested in the Court to be exercised taking into consideration the facts and circumstances of a particular case. The Courts have to be more cautious when the said power is being exercised without notice or hearing the party who is to be affected by the order so passed.”
Shiv Kumar Chadha v. Municipal Corporation of Delhi, (1993) 3 SCC 161An ex parte order is therefore not a shortcut you are entitled to because your matter feels urgent. It is an exception the court has to justify in writing, and an application that does not explain why waiting would defeat the purpose has not asked for one properly.
Rule 3A says that where an injunction has been granted without giving notice to the opposite party, the court shall make an endeavour to finally dispose of the application within thirty days, and where it is unable to do so, it shall record its reasons.
People treat the first order as the end of the fight, relax, and are startled when it is vacated. It was never meant to last. The thirty days are there precisely because the other side has not been heard.
Move immediately, because the architecture of the rule is on your side.
Get the order and the papers. Appear and apply to have it discharged, varied or set aside, which Order XXXIX provides for. Point out the thirty-day obligation in Rule 3A, because it is the court's own obligation and it exists for you. And check whether the applicant actually complied with the requirement to deliver the documents to you immediately — non-compliance is a real and often decisive point.
What not to do is wait for the next date and treat the order as settled. Every week it stands without challenge makes it harder to dislodge.
The order says do not sell, and they sell. The order says do not construct, and the slab goes up. This happens, and the answer is in the same Order rather than somewhere else.
On disobedience or breach of an injunction, the court may order the property of the person concerned to be attached, and may also order his detention in civil prison for a term not exceeding three months.
An attachment under the rule does not remain in force for more than one year. If the disobedience continues beyond that, the attached property may be sold and the court may award compensation out of the proceeds to the injured party.
Two things to take from that. The sanction is real, including imprisonment. And it is quick relative to most civil remedies, because it goes back to the court that made the order.
People instinctively reach for contempt. For breach of a civil court's injunction, Rule 2A is the designed route and is usually faster, because the judge who made the order deals with the breach and does not have to be persuaded that an order exists.
Contempt machinery has its own thresholds and its own forum. Choosing the wrong one costs months, and the choice is worth putting to an advocate with the order and the evidence of breach in front of them.
An appeal lies from “an order under rule 1, rule 2 [rule 2A], rule 4 or rule 10 of Order XXXIX”.
Order XLIII Rule 1(r), Code of Civil Procedure 1908Which cuts both ways. If an injunction has been granted against you, that order is appealable. If your application has been refused, that refusal is appealable too. So an adverse order at the first hearing is not the end of the matter.
Temper that with reality. An appellate court is slow to substitute its own view of the facts on an interlocutory matter, and the appeal has its own period. If the order is wrong in principle — a bar in section 41 ignored, no finding on irreparable injury — that is a much better appeal than one which simply disagrees.
In ordinary speech they are the same. In a courtroom they are not, and the distinction is worth holding.
An injunction operates on a person: it directs somebody to do or not do something, and disobedience is punished under Rule 2A. A stay normally operates on a proceeding or an order — an appellate court staying the operation of a decree, a higher court staying proceedings below.
They come from different provisions and are asked for in different ways. Which is why telling an advocate that you want a stay order, without saying what you want stopped and who is doing it, is not yet a request anybody can act on.
Frequently what you actually get at the first hearing is an order that status quo be maintained. It is quick to make, hard for either side to resist, and it buys the court time to hear the application properly.
It is also a reliable source of a second dispute, because status quo as on which date, and in respect of what, often goes unsaid. If you are given one, ask for the date and the subject matter to be recorded in the order. Thirty seconds at the time saves an application later.
An order to do something, rather than to stop: remove the structure, restore the access, give the thing back.
Courts are noticeably more reluctant to grant these at an interim stage, and the reason is structural: a mandatory order gives the applicant the substance of the suit before the suit has been tried. Where the act complained of was done in a hurry to create a situation on the ground, that reluctance softens, and the speed with which the applicant came to court becomes an argument.
A temporary injunction lasts until the court varies or vacates it, or until the suit is decided, whichever happens first. It does not survive the judgment, which replaces it with whatever the decree says.
An ex parte order is different in intent: Rule 3A sets thirty days as the period within which the court is to endeavour to finish the application. Treat anything beyond that as borrowed time rather than as a settled position.
Order XXXIX operates in a suit, so a civil court does not grant a temporary injunction before one exists. The practical answer to urgency is therefore to file quickly, not to look for a different instrument.
There is one route worth knowing about. Where the dispute is covered by an arbitration clause, a court can grant interim measures before the arbitration begins, which our page on arbitration covers. If your contract has such a clause, that is the door, and going to a civil court instead will cost you time.
If you expect somebody to come to court against you and to ask for an order behind your back, there is a mechanism: a caveat, which is a notice to the court that you want to be heard before any order is made against you.
It is inexpensive, it is quick, and it is the only genuinely preventive step available. It does not stop a case being filed. What it does is make an ex parte order much harder to obtain, which is usually the thing you were actually worried about. You can find it under caveat petition.
People ask which court gives stay orders. The question is really which court your suit belongs in, because the application goes wherever the suit goes.
That is decided by the ordinary rules: where the defendant lives or works, where the cause of action arose, and, for immovable property, where the property is. The value of the claim then decides which court within that place. None of this is special to injunctions, and all of it is the first thing an advocate will work out, because filing in the wrong court does not merely delay the application — it can cost you the urgency you came with.
One consequence worth knowing. If your dispute has an arbitration clause, the court you go to for interim measures is the one at the seat named in the clause, which may be a city you have no connection with. Our page on arbitration explains why that line in the contract matters more than it looks.
The application itself is not the expensive part. The suit is.
Court fee is payable on the suit, calculated on the relief claimed and the state's own schedule, and in a property matter that can be substantial. Then there is drafting, and then appearance, which continues for as long as the application is being heard — and an interim application that is argued over four or five dates costs real money before the main case has begun.
Set against that, the alternative is sometimes worse. If the thing you are trying to stop cannot be undone, the cost of the application is the cost of not losing the subject matter. If it can be undone with money, the arithmetic usually points the other way, which is the same answer the irreparable injury test gives for a different reason.
What we would avoid is spending on an application that section 41 bars. That is the one category of expenditure with a guaranteed return of nothing.
Getting the order is not the same as the order working. Four things have to happen, and the first two are yours.
That third point is the one most often missed. An injunction operates on the person it is made against. It does not automatically freeze a register, stop a mutation, or bind a buyer who never heard of it, though it may make life difficult for everybody involved afterwards. If you need the record itself protected, say so in the application and ask for an order in those terms.
The three requirements, met on the facts, in order, with documents rather than adjectives.
Applications that spend four pages on the history of the quarrel and one line on irreparable injury are drafted the wrong way round, and they are the majority.
Interim relief is commonly given on terms, and a court may require an undertaking, a deposit or a condition attached to the order. Decide in advance what you are prepared to offer, because an applicant who has thought about this is in a much stronger position than one who is asked and has to think.
And ask for what the facts support. An application that over-reaches invites a court to refuse the whole thing rather than to trim it, and the second order is much harder to get than the first.
An interim order is made on what the court has been shown. An order obtained by concealing something material is vulnerable for that reason alone, and the conduct also engages section 41(i), under which an injunction cannot be granted where the conduct of the plaintiff or his agents has been such as to disentitle him to the assistance of the court.
If you are on the receiving end of such an order, the useful thing is not indignation. It is a short, specific list of what was not disclosed, with the document proving each item.
This is where most injunction applications in India live. Somebody is building on land you say is yours, extending into a common area, blocking an access, or preparing to sell property that is in dispute.
Two things to keep in view. The interim order is not the case; the suit behind it is usually for possession, declaration or a permanent injunction, and it is the suit that has to be won. And there is a clock: a suit for possession based on title carries its own period, and letting it run out does not merely bar the suit, it extinguishes the right. Our pages on property disputes and limitation deal with both.
Where the complaint is against a builder, an injunction is often not the best first move. A consumer complaint costs very little, does not require you to satisfy a three-limb interim test, and is not shut out by the arbitration clause in the agreement.
The injunction route earns its keep where something physical is about to happen that cannot be undone. Our consumer court page and our arbitration page set out the alternatives.
An injunction can be granted against a government or a public authority, subject to the same requirements and to the special provisions about notice before suing the government, which add time to the front of the process.
In urgent matters those provisions, rather than the merits, are usually the practical obstacle. If a government body or municipal authority is on the other side, say so in the first conversation with an advocate, because it changes the timetable rather than the test.
The document that establishes your right: the title deed, the agreement, the allotment letter, the licence. Evidence of what the other side is doing or about to do, dated. Anything showing why money later would not repair it. Any earlier order in the matter, including one passed against you. And, if you have been served, the order and everything that came with it.
Whether an injunction is granted turns on the documents the court sees, a comparison between two sides it has not met before, and a view about urgency formed in a few minutes. Two applications with similar facts and different papers routinely go different ways.
What we can tell you, and will, is whether your situation runs into one of the eleven bars in section 41, and whether the harm you describe is the kind a decree for damages would repair. Those two questions dispose of most of these before anybody reaches the merits, and they are answerable from the papers. The rest is a prediction, and anybody selling you one is guessing.
Asking for a stay order without a suit. Describing harm that money can fix and expecting an injunction anyway. Going to a civil court to stop a criminal case. Ignoring section 41 until the other side raises it. Treating an ex parte order as the end of the matter and missing the thirty days. Not serving the documents immediately after getting an ex parte order, and losing it for that. Waiting instead of applying to vacate an order made against you. Filing a contempt petition where Rule 2A was the route. Accepting a status quo order without a date in it. And over-asking, so that a court refuses everything rather than trimming.
Almost always, and quickly, because this is one of the few areas where days matter.
Specifically: when something is about to happen that cannot be undone; when an order has been made against you without notice; when an injunction you obtained has been broken; when the other side is a government body; and when you are not sure whether your relief falls inside section 41, because that is the question that decides whether the application is worth filing at all.
Where it is genuinely optional is nowhere in this subject. Interim applications are decided fast and on paper, and a badly drafted one does lasting damage because the second application is always harder than the first.
The paper that has to exist first: the plaint.
An injunction application is judged on the case pleaded in the suit, which means drafting the application well and the suit badly produces a weak application. We draft the suit, with the interim relief in view from the start, so that the facts the application needs are already pleaded where the court will look for them. You can find it under civil suit drafting, and the application itself under application drafting.
We also put you in touch with advocates through the directory, free, with your number hidden until one accepts. Appearing and arguing the application is an advocate's work and not ours.
For the 1993 judgment on ex parte injunctions we have the case name, the citation and the passage quoted, but we could not establish the bench or the exact date from the source we used, so we have not stated them.
Where we describe provisions we have not quoted — the power to vary or set aside an order, the supplemental proceedings provision, the notice requirements before suing the government — we are paraphrasing, and we say so rather than implying we read the bare text.
We have not reproduced the whole of Order XXXIX. The rules quoted are those that decide most applications.
Nothing to ask. Nothing to be connected with an advocate. For the suit, and for the application, the price is on the service page, stated before you order, and there is no commission from anybody's side.
Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.
Almost nobody reading this chose arbitration. It was in the loan agreement, the builder agreement, the insurance policy — a clause nobody negotiated. So the first question is not how arbitration works; it is whether that clause can be used the way the other side says. On the two commonest versions the Supreme Court has said no. A party interested in the outcome cannot alone appoint the arbitrator (2019), and a Constitution Bench held in November 2024 that unilateral appointment clauses in public-private contracts violate Article 14. And if you are a consumer, the clause does not shut the consumer forum. Plus the twelve-plus-six month clock, the grounds for setting an award aside in the statute’s own words, the 2025 ruling on when a court may modify one, and why filing a challenge no longer freezes the award.
ReadThe one rule a court applies against you even if the other side never mentions it. Section 3 says a late suit shall be dismissed although limitation has not been set up as a defence, so hoping nobody notices is not a plan. We set out how the Schedule really works — and why the third column, saying when time starts, decides more than the number of years does. What restarts the clock (a signed acknowledgement, a recorded part payment) and the condition both carry. Why delay can be condoned in an appeal but never in a suit. The Covid exclusion of 15 March 2020 to 28 February 2022, still worth nearly two years and still forgotten. And section 27, where losing the period does not just bar the suit — it extinguishes the ownership.
ReadEvery page on this subject opens by saying mediation is voluntary. That is true of one of the three mediations you can end up in. Before a commercial suit it is compulsory, and the Supreme Court has treated compliance as jurisdictional — skip it and the plaint is liable to be rejected. And a court can refer you without your consent at all, unlike arbitration. We also did the thing nobody seems to have done: checked how much of the Mediation Act 2023 is actually in force. The commencement notification we could find switched on the regulator and the rule-making power — not pre-litigation mediation, not confidentiality, not enforcement. Plus the section 12A judgments from 2022 to October 2025, what is privileged, and the four grounds on which a settlement can be undone.
ReadTwenty pages on this site mention it and none of them explained it, so here it is from the only angle that matters: the point of view of the person being asked to sign. A Lok Adalat cannot decide anything — the Supreme Court said so in 2008 — it only records what you agree to. And section 21(2) makes that record a civil decree against which no appeal lies to any court. Not a suit to set it aside, and not objections in execution: the Supreme Court shut both doors in November 2025, in a case where a man lost a property he had bought for four crore rupees through an award he was never party to. Also what can and cannot be referred, the divorce line nobody reconciles, the court fee refund, why the traffic challan discount has no instrument behind it, and the Permanent Lok Adalat, which can decide against you.
ReadThe words are not interchangeable in India and the difference has consequences. Who may appear for you, where notaries, legal consultants, document writers and “case managers” fit, and how to spot somebody who is not entitled to practise.
ReadA three-question test that does not depend on how frightened you are, an honest list of when the answer is no, what the Advocates Act actually restricts, why a power-of-attorney holder cannot argue your case, and who is entitled to free legal aid.
ReadHow to verify that somebody is really enrolled, why specialisation by forum beats seniority, the Bar Council rules that protect you before you sign anything, the conflict question to ask on day one, and the question almost nobody asks.
ReadWhy no honest Indian site publishes an advocate’s fee, the fee structures actually used, why “no win no fee” is not permitted here, what is a fee and what is an expense, and how to agree it so there is no argument later.
ReadWhat to take, in what order, what to say about the facts that hurt you, what a vakalatnama actually does and how long it lasts, what to write down before you leave, and what should happen in the first week afterwards.
ReadWritten for both sides. Why a single line at three thousand five hundred rupees decides which of two separate systems your tenancy is in, the closed list of grounds under Section 14, the first-default protection most tenants never hear about, the summary procedure under Section 25B that is lost by doing nothing, notice under Section 106, and why changing the locks is the worst thing a landlord can do.
ReadThree different suits wear one name. Whether you are asking for a share, for possession, or for a document to be undone — and why each has a different clock. Self-acquired against coparcenary, a daughter’s right by birth, why a mutation entry is not ownership, why GPA and will papers are not a conveyance, and the two decrees a partition suit ends in.
ReadOne “no” at the counter is not where the law ends. The three doors, in the order the law gives them — the police station, the DCP under Section 173(4), the Magistrate under Section 175(3) with its new affidavit condition — plus the complaint case where the accused is now heard first, and why the officer refusing you is sometimes right.
ReadThe distinction everything rests on, and why it is decided on the medical record by another doctor rather than by how bad the outcome was. Why the complete record is the first step and must be obtained before you complain, consent as a separate and often stronger ground, and the three roads — compensation, prosecution and professional discipline — of which only one pays.
ReadThe one law that can take back property you already signed away. Section 23 and what Urmila Dixit (2025) settled about eviction and possession, the Maintenance Tribunal before a Sub-Divisional Magistrate, the ceiling on the monthly amount and the route that has none, whether you may actually bring a lawyer, and where a daughter-in-law’s right of residence fits.
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ReadFive different papers, five different answers to “what if I do nothing”. A private legal notice against a civil summons, a criminal summons, a tribunal notice and a police notice; the thirty days that is directory and the hundred and twenty that is not; ex parte orders and the thirty days to undo one; and why complying with a Section 35(3) police notice now protects you.
ReadWhat a family does in the first twenty-four hours, and the two rights nobody will offer you: default bail under Section 187(3), which turns on sixty or ninety days rather than the merits and dies the day the chargesheet is filed, and release under Section 479 after half the maximum sentence — a third for a first-time accused. Plus sureties, conditions, and why a bail order is not release.
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Read“The marriage is over” is not a ground — Parliament never made irretrievable breakdown one, and no Family Court can act on it. So the case turns on what you can PROVE. The Section 13 grounds as they actually read, what cruelty means after Samar Ghosh and what it does not, desertion and its two years, the one-year bar, and why Section 23(1)(a) destroys a manufactured ground.
ReadThe danger is rarely a confrontation — it is a false complaint at a police station, and from that moment the State does the family’s work for it. What answers it is her own statement before a Magistrate. Plus the protection petition, why consenting adults are covered married or not, the three-day rule when you move, and the honest Delhi position on the thirty-day notice. For adults only.
ReadThe paper in your hand picks your procedure — not the amount, and not how obviously you are in the right. On a cheque, a note, a written contract or a guarantee, Order XXXVII gives you a suit in which the defendant has no right to defend. Plus the three-year clock, the written acknowledgment that restarts it, why a cheque bounce complaint is not a recovery suit, the mandatory mediation that gets commercial suits rejected, and why winning is not the same as being paid.
ReadTwo questions come before the facts: which door, and how much time is left. Section 6(1) built the Local Committee for the two situations in which the office route is useless — fewer than ten workers, or a complaint against the employer himself. Section 9(1) starts a three-month clock from the last incident, extendable by three, and recent decisions treat the outer edge as a wall. Plus who counts as an employee, what counts as a workplace, the conciliation that may not end in money, the inquiry’s civil-court powers, and why Section 28 means the committee and the police are not an either–or.
ReadWhat your building legally IS decides the case, not what you are complaining about. Most Delhi RWAs sit under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 — a registration statute with no power to levy maintenance, fine a member or recover anything, so the charge rests on the bye-laws and is enforced only by suit. A co-operative society goes to the Registrar under Section 70, where an election challenge dies in thirty days. And a building under the Delhi Apartment Ownership Act, 1986 has a Deed of Apartment, parking inside the statutory definition of common areas, dues as a charge on the flat, and model bye-laws that make elections and audit compulsory.
ReadA challan is two different things wearing one name. Some can be paid and closed; the rest cannot be paid at all, because the compounding list takes in Section 184 only for handheld phone use and leaves Section 185 out altogether. The notice is not a bill either – it is issued under the section headed “Restriction on conviction”. Plus what paying on the Virtual Court actually means, why the “three challans” suspension rule does not exist, and what to do when challans keep arriving for a car you sold years ago. No penalty figures, and the page says why.
Read“Court” on a challan does not mean a trial. It means a Magistrate now holds the file, and that the next click is a plea rather than a payment. How to find the case – and why a driving licence number will never find it. Why the summons only appears after you act. What contesting actually does, and the published figure showing how few people do it. The Act’s own short route, why traffic offences are expressly NOT petty offences under the new code, when you must attend in person, what the court can do to your licence, and what five official sources say – and do not say – about ignoring it.
ReadA licence goes out of two different doors – a government office under Section 19 and Rule 21, or a courtroom on conviction – and the grounds, the appeal and the way back differ for each. The appeal is thirty days from RECEIPT, and we found no provision for condoning delay. A High Court has quashed a suspension that named no ground and recorded no satisfaction. The licence does not simply revive when the period ends: the Act wants a refresher course, or a fresh test and a medical certificate. And almost nobody knows you can apply to have a disqualification removed after six months. Plus why there is no three-challan rule and no points system in force.
ReadEverybody argues “it was not me”. The strongest ground is usually not your evidence at all – it is whether the challan complies with the rule the government wrote for issuing it. Rule 167A requires the camera to carry a yearly approval certificate, requires the challan to be accompanied by FIVE named things including a photograph showing the offence AND the plate, and requires the notice to be sent within fifteen days. And Rule 167A(10) gives an owner who was not driving an express right to say so – a right the portal does not implement. Plus Delhi’s own complaint form, the cloned-plate gap nobody fills, and why Section 209 is a far weaker shield than people think.
ReadWe read the registration chapter of the Act section by section, and the answer is not the one anybody wants: there is no provision by which a seller can take himself off the register without a transfer being completed. Transfer needs the buyer. Cancellation is about the vehicle – destroyed, beyond repair, removed out of INDIA, not out of the State. And the challans are the smallest part of it: the Supreme Court has held that a registered owner who purported to sell but still appears in the records is not absolved of liability for compensation. Form 29 is necessary and has not been shown to be sufficient. One rule prevents all of it.
ReadThe counter says clear the challans first, and nobody says under what. We went looking. The Act has no such provision at all – not in section 48, not in section 50, not in fitness or permits. The power is in a rule, and the rule is narrower than the practice: ninety days, the offender’s own licence or the vehicle named in the challan, and permit, fitness and tax expressly left out. A 2018 ministry circular goes further and cites no authority for doing so. Then on 28 September 2026 the Supreme Court directed much of it anyway. Plus the Kerala judgment holding that a transfer after a death is not a transaction at all.
ReadThe section is headed “offences by juveniles” and the person it makes guilty is an adult: the guardian of the child or the owner of the vehicle, and those can be two different people. ₹25,000 and up to three years, the registration cancelled for twelve months, and no licence for the child until twenty-five. The part nobody prints: Section 199A is not in the compounding list, so it cannot be paid at a counter and must go to court. Plus the complete exemption in sub-section (3), the written representation the Act requires before a registration is cancelled, and why the Pune case was not this section at all.
ReadTwo things are said everywhere about this and both are wrong. It cannot be paid online – Section 185 is absent from the compounding list, so a court challan is issued and a magistrate decides, which the Delhi Traffic Police has itself confirmed. And six months in prison is the maximum, not the outcome: the reported figures show custody in under a tenth of cases, for days. The consequence that is real, and that nobody prints, is the licence – on conviction, disqualification of at least six months, and the provision carries no “special reasons” escape at all.
ReadSince the transport strike of January 2024 every page on this subject has been built on a provision that has never been brought into force. The government’s own release excluded Section 106(2) when the new criminal laws commenced, and the Delhi High Court confirmed in July 2026 that it was still unnotified. The charge in practice carries five years and is classified as bailable. Plus the twenty-four hour reporting window almost nobody knows about, and the ₹2 lakh claim the Supreme Court found only 205 families in the whole country made in a year.
ReadAcross nine pages on challans and road cases we kept saying this is a court application and not something to settle at a police station, and kept not explaining how. This is that page. The old provision had no deadline at all – its replacement gives the court fourteen days to record and photograph the vehicle and thirty days to order its release, and a High Court enforced that in August 2026. Plus why the registration certificate is not the whole answer, how much the bond can lawfully be, and the special statutes where the Magistrate has no power at all.
ReadOur first state page, and the state-specific part is narrower and stranger than people expect. Rajasthan’s notification binds officers by rank and by area: a Head Constable may compound inside the Jaipur and Jodhpur Commissionerates, an Assistant Sub-Inspector everywhere else. The state’s own motor vehicles rules contain no compounding provision at all. Plus the thirty-day appeal to the RTO, a quarter of every compounding fee going to a non-lapsable road safety fund, who really owns the highway cameras, and why a seized vehicle here is so often a mining matter.
ReadSearch “Punjab e-challan” and almost everything you get belongs to Pakistan — the Punjab Safe Cities Authority in Lahore, a row of .pk sites, and commercial services. Not one Indian government result. The reason is that Punjab publishes almost nothing: its Transport Department’s whole notifications page holds nine items, four of them single scanned pages 11, 12, 16 and 17 of one user-charges file, and no section 200 schedule at all — while its own menu sends you to the centre. One date does exist: 19 December 2019, so here alone you can ask for the notification by name. Plus three two-second tells, the Gurmukhi-versus-Shahmukhi check, and why Chandigarh — whose Administrator is Punjab’s Governor — wrote the best schedule in India.
ReadOne question put to thirty-four Indian states and union territories: have you published what a challan costs, and who may take it? Five published a schedule after the 2019 amendment, seven are still running documents older than it — the oldest from 2008 — and around twenty publish no amount at all. In the whole country only two schedules tell you that a helmet offence costs three months of your licence. The full comparison table with every jurisdiction linked, the four jobs a schedule actually does, the patterns we did not expect — and every correction we have had to publish about our own pages, in one place.
ReadThe only jurisdiction in this series that was created while the amended Act was already running. Two Union territories merged on 26 January 2020, but section 17 of the Merger Act kept both rulebooks alive in their own halves — so the real question is whether Daman runs on one schedule and Silvassa on another. Neither exists. The registration mark was unified in four days; the municipal regime in eight months; the compounding schedule not in six years. The Transport Department publishes four documents, the whole legal library two entries, the police force’s rules shelf one reservation roster — and the traffic police page never once uses the word challan.
ReadThe smallest jurisdiction in this series, and the first where we had to ask whether our own question is fair. No two inhabited islands are joined by a road. The police run seven coastal security stations and publish no traffic page. The Department of Road Transport names no Act and no Rules at all — the only one of thirty-three — and a single Motor Vehicle Inspector is Licensing Authority for the whole territory. No section 200 notification could be found. We argue it both ways and then say where we come down: the principle holds, the scale does not — and a one-page notification would settle it.
ReadThe A&N Police publish a ninety-seven row spot fines list — the largest and most current schedule in this series. It marks which offences go to court instead of a counter, notes where the licence is to be seized, and prices the one compoundable limb of section 184 at ₹3,000 while sending the other five to court in the same row. Its notification is dated 22 days after the 2019 amendment — faster than Assam, which we had called the fastest. And row 17 of it caught three wrong figures in our own tables, which this page sets out in full.
ReadOn 25 August 2026 Ladakh notified S.O. 250, directing twenty per cent of everything collected by compounding traffic violations into a road safety fund — non-lapsable, audited by the CAG, and spent on signage, black spots, driving test tracks and ambulances. Puducherry promised exactly this in 2015 and never did it. The same notification calls a compounding fee one taken by “the officers authorised under Section 200” — so that authorisation exists, and we still could not find it. A territory that has published where a fifth of your money goes, and not what the money is.
ReadIn 2023 this territory recorded 13,72,501 traffic challans — 4,28,609 compounded and 9,43,892 sent to court. That is sixty-nine per cent going to a magistrate, which is the opposite of what section 200 exists to achieve, and no other jurisdiction in this series publishes the split at all. We could find no compounding notification here. The Act itself only arrived on 31 October 2019 — sixty days after the amendment — so this is the one place in India that has never known the pre-2019 Act. And in Srinagar 835 cameras now issue challans with no published procedure, for the one offence that costs you your licence.
ReadSikkim publishes the region’s fullest compounding schedule — forty-four priced rows in four columns, graded by repeat offence and by vehicle class — made by Notification No. 121/MV/T dated 29 July 2010. Sixteen years on it still prices a general contravention at ₹100, has no helmet row at all because the section did not exist, and carries two figures now below the statutory minimum. Meanwhile the same department runs AI cameras with a ten-day cure window and a written promise to pay you double if the machine is wrong — the most citizen-protective provision we have found anywhere. The newest enforcement in India, pointed at the oldest price list.
ReadArunachal publishes no compounding schedule, and the only state statute its district transport office names is a taxation Act. But one district did something no government in this series has done: it published what it collected. Lohit reported 3,782 challans and ₹42,18,800 in 2025 — which divides into about ₹1,115 per challan, the first real figure we have had for what is actually being charged on a road rather than what a document says it should be. And behind it sits Article 371H, under which this State’s Governor alone carries a personal responsibility for law and order — a question we raise and deliberately leave open.
ReadTripura publishes twenty-six no-parking zones and twelve parking zones in Agartala, each with a notification number and date; a tax penalty scale; and eleven amendments to its Motor Vehicles Rules, the latest dated five days before the central compoundable list changed. It publishes no compounding amount at all — and its Notices link points at nothing while its Acts link points at a file that will not open. Then its accident figures changed our mind: deaths fell forty per cent in two years while crashes fell nine. That is survival, not prevention — and it forced us to say plainly what a published schedule is actually for.
ReadPuducherry left us asking who the “State Government” is in a Union territory. Chandigarh answers it in practice: its notification of 6 December 2019 says the section 200(1) power is exercised by the Administrator — who since 1984 is, ex officio, the Governor of Punjab. What follows is the best compounding notification we have read: 30 rows, five columns, a column naming the only three authorities who may compound, the three-month licence disqualification written in (the first schedule in the series to do it), section 206(4) on the speeding rows, and section 184 limited in brackets to handheld devices. One problem: the police website misquotes it in four places, including a date fourteen months in the future.
ReadSection 200 gives the compounding power to “the State Government”. Puducherry is a Union territory — and the General Clauses Act says that in a Union territory those words mean the Central Government, while a Council of Ministers advises an Administrator whose disagreements go to the President. We set the provisions out and leave the question open. Underneath: the territory’s rules are not made under section 200 (second jurisdiction proved on the instrument’s face), two different monthly rates sit under one ₹100 cap, the police table of 95 offences carries pre-2019 figures — and the territory’s own 2015 policy recorded a death rate double the national average and promised to notify penalties and fund road safety from compounding.
ReadA compounding arrangement has two halves — what an offence costs, and who may settle it for which offences. Most states publish one. Mizoram publishes both, and they do not match. Its penalties page, updated February 2025, is the only state document in this series that names section 177A, and the only government page that prints the three-month licence disqualification under 194C. Its compounding notification is from 1 August 2018 — still listing section 191, which 2019 removed, and listing nothing 2019 inserted. So a helmet is priced at ₹1,000 on one government page and absent from the other. Plus the only rank floor in India with a uniform condition on it.
ReadTwenty-one pages read a state’s schedule. Nagaland does not publish one — but it published something no other state government did: a notice telling the public that section 200 itself had been replaced. Serial 26 of the Schedule to the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023, commenced by S.O. 227(E) on 13 January 2025, substituted section 200(1) and added 177A, 192B(3) and 201 to the compoundable list — so every schedule in this series is now under-inclusive, and the community service power may have been deleted before any state used it. Following 177A back led somewhere stranger: the regulations it punishes were superseded in 2017, and state departments are still publishing the 1989 version.
ReadTwenty pages built around a table. Meghalaya’s section 200 notification has no table at all — instead of figures it sets a rule: amounts “not lesser than fifty percent of the maximum fine prescribed”. So a 2011 document still works, while Telangana’s fixed schedule from fifteen weeks earlier went stale. But the formula only saved the money, not the scope — its list of nine sections is from 2011, and section 194D for helmets did not exist then. Chasing that took us to something twenty-one pages had never done: reading section 200 itself — which settles that the compoundable list is Parliament’s and not the states’, confirms why drink driving can never be compounded, and reveals a community service power no state has used.
ReadThree pages in this series quoted a state rule capping a composition amount at ₹100 and we treated it as a stale state figure. We were wrong, and Goa proves it. Its rule 54 names its own parent provision — section 50(3), which allows “not exceeding one hundred rupees” in lieu of action under section 177. The ceiling is Parliament’s, not the state’s. In 1988 section 177 also carried ₹100 — the two matched exactly. In 2019 Parliament raised section 177 to ₹500 and ₹1,500 and left that ceiling alone: a 31-year symmetry became a 15:1 gap by nobody doing anything. Also here: the four paperwork delays this reaches, and why the real exposure on a late transfer is never the fee.
ReadOn Shimla’s sealed and restricted roads the law that stops you is not the Motor Vehicles Act — it is a Himachal statute of its own, the Shimla Road Users and Pedestrians (Public Safety and Convenience) Act, 2007. And it contains what no section 200 schedule in India contains: a fifty per cent on-the-spot settlement written into the Act itself, twice. Also here: the RC and the licence impounded if you do not pay; a plea of guilty by money order; time limits that run against the prosecution rather than against you; two appeals with named officers and real deadlines — the first appellate route in nineteen states that is in a statute; and section 22, confirming the Motor Vehicles Act keeps running alongside all of it.
ReadSeventeen states chose their own numbers. Assam did not choose. It issued notification TMV.250/2019/67 twenty-five days after the 2019 amendment — the fastest in India — and across eighty-eight rows gave no discount at all: every figure is the Act’s own. It is also the only state in eighteen that publishes four separate schedules, one per class of officer. The price never changes between them; the permission does. Police cannot compound overloading in Assam, and the two ₹1,00,000 dealer rows are reserved to senior transport officers. On a second speeding offence the schedule offers no amount at all — it offers impounding of the licence under section 206(4). Then in June 2024 the cabinet replaced the two-wheeler document fine with a warning, which is generous and which settles nothing.
ReadThe state publishes its own price list and almost nobody has read it. Notification F 5-5/VIII-Trans/2021 of 25 October 2021, issued under sub-section (1) of section 200 and sitting on the department’s own gazette archive — one of only two post-2019 schedules in India. Forty priced entries, twenty-four kinds of officer down to a Head Constable, and a repeat-offence column used on nineteen of forty rows where Madhya Pradesh — same 1994 rulebook, same design — uses it on six of thirty-one. We measured every row against the Act: a tenth of it on one section, the whole of it on five, one row above the Act and one below its floor. Plus the three-month disqualification that no schedule in seventeen states has ever mentioned.
ReadFifteen pages of schedules answer one question — what does it cost. Kerala answers the one that matters after you have paid. Following the Supreme Court, the High Court has held that even after a section 194 offence is compounded, the excess load cannot be permitted to stay on the vehicle — and directed that the driving licence goes to the Licensing Authority under section 19(1) even where the offence is compounded under section 200. Paying ends the offence. It does not authorise the condition, and it does not stop the second track. Also here: ₹5,000 per light for after-market LEDs, and Kerala’s 726 AI cameras — 1.3 crore challans, ₹900 crore issued, ₹300 crore collected, and ₹34.8 crore of payments frozen over questions about which cameras can even read speed.
ReadEvery schedule in this series was drafted before Parliament rewrote the penalties in 2019 — Telangana’s 2011, Andhra Pradesh’s 2008, Maharashtra’s 2016. Madhya Pradesh issued one on 6 March 2023, superseding all others. It is the only post-amendment list in fifteen states. And it prices three ways at once: by section, by first or second offence, and by what you drive. We checked every row — the repeat column changes the figure on only six of thirty-one, and those six turn out to be a coherent set. Also here: ₹1,00,000 per vehicle aimed at dealers not drivers, ₹300 for a helmet (the lowest anywhere), a load-projection row priced by what you are carrying, and 19 categories of officer including District Magistrates.
ReadBoth states carry a “Compounding” link. Open Andhra Pradesh’s and it is a different law altogether — not section 200 but section 86(5), the money taken instead of suspending your permit. G.O. Ms. No. 332 of 2008, rule 217, priced by what the vehicle is and what it carries: overload ₹2,000 + ₹100 per 100 kg, ₹200 per hour for missing your timings, ₹500 per excess big animal. Medium goods pay half, light goods a third. And AP is the only state in fourteen that publishes the other half too — a prosecution table naming the eight offences no payment will ever close. Its note four is the sting: the published fees are minimums, not prices.
ReadThirteen states in, we finally have the document itself. Every page so far ended the same way — the amounts live in a notification under section 200 that nobody can open. Telangana publishes its own. G.O. Ms. No. 108 of 18 August 2011: eighteen offences, two columns by vehicle, the officers who may take the money — and a proviso that does what nothing else in this series does. It writes the state’s own ceiling: the compounding fee shall not exceed the maximum fine prescribed in the relevant penal section. Odisha showed the floor; this is the roof. One problem: it is dated 2011 and the Act changed in 2019. Also here: the real 80–90% discount of December 2023, a half-rate for agriculturists, and why the police have had to call the yearly “discount” messages fake and fraudulent.
ReadTwelve states in, this is the one that shows you the line. Odisha’s One Time Settlement Scheme for e-challans pending on 31 July 2025 is not a flat discount. Six rows say “50%”. Eleven say a rupee figure — and that figure is always the exact statutory minimum the Act prescribes, never half. Seventeen rows, no exceptions. Where Parliament wrote “may extend to” the state halved it; where Parliament wrote “not less than” the state stopped dead at the floor. We reproduce all seventeen. Also: what the annexure leaves out — helmet, seat belt, insurance, licence, overloading — the notified speed limits under s.112, and a scheme that names no power and carries no legible date.
ReadThree states have now printed a composition rate in their own rules, and all three measure delay differently. Karnataka counts months. Tamil Nadu uses bands of days. Uttarakhand counts weeks — and sets the rate by what you drive. Rule 45: one rupee a week for an invalid carriage, five for a motor cycle, fifty for everything else — and a proviso capping the lot at ₹100. So a lorry hits the ceiling in a fortnight and an invalid carriage takes two years. Unlike Tamil Nadu, transport vehicles are in. Also here: the first appeal fee printed anywhere in eleven states (₹20 and ₹25), the Deputy Transport Commissioner (legal and tribunal), and a year in which challans rose 118.77% while collections rose 37.07%.
ReadTen states in, and this is the one that is open about exactly one half of itself. Tamil Nadu publishes no compounding amounts for road offences and no officer schedule — and then prints four composition rates inside its own rules, which almost nobody is ever shown. Rules 98, 105-A, 109 and 113: a late registration, a transfer not reported, a new registration mark, a change of address. ₹40 up to thirty days, ₹75 to sixty, ₹100 after — and ₹150 in the top slab of rule 113 alone. Each rule says the money is taken in lieu of any action under section 177, which no other state spells out. Also here: the enabling clause cites a section 311 that does not exist in the Act, rule 98 quietly leaves transport vehicles out, the founding notification carries no date, and section 200 is absent for the seventh time in seven tests.
ReadNine states in, the range has turned out to be enormous — and Gujarat sits at the bottom of it. Chief Minister Vijay Rupani announced the cuts on 10 September 2019: triple riding at ₹100, where West Bengal takes ₹1,000 and three months of your licence. Helmet and seat belt ₹500. A pollution offence ₹1,000, where Bengal takes ₹10,000 with a disqualification. Ten times, for the same words in the same Act. Then on 4 December 2019 the Transport Minister announced helmets would be optional except on highways and panchayat roads — we print what was said, flag that we could not find the notification, and say plainly that this is no reason to ride without one. Also here: rule 107, the first appeal procedure we have been able to read in nine states, and rule 98A’s thirty-day grievance clock for app aggregators.
ReadTwo things, and the first one saves money today. Rules 37 and 45 of the Karnataka Motor Vehicles Rules still compose a late registration renewal and a late transfer intimation at twenty-five rupees a calendar month, capped at one hundred rupees — figures written in 1989 and never updated, and the two lapses vehicle owners get caught by most. We quote both rules in full. The second thing is bigger: Karnataka is where somebody asked out loud whether a state may cut a traffic fine. The Centre said yes on 11 September 2019, Karnataka took legal opinion, cut on 21 September, and the Centre then said states had no authority at all. Both were right about different things — a state cannot touch the fine a court imposes, but section 200 gives it the compounding amount. That distinction is the key to every other state page on this site, and this is where it surfaced.
ReadEvery state publishes what you can pay. Maharashtra is the only one that also published what you cannot — a list of nine non-compoundable offences. Two of them are things your neighbours let you settle for money: driving without a permit (₹10,000 in both Jharkhand and West Bengal) and overloading (₹20,000 plus ₹2,000 a tonne in Jharkhand). Here there is no amount at all — a court decides, both the driver and the owner are charged, and a repeat permit offence carries a minimum three-month sentence. The same document shows a Police Constable as the compounding authority for about 95 of 104 offences, the lowest rank floor of any state we have examined and the exact opposite of Bengal. Its money is from 2016 and stale, it is still sitting on a government server, and we say so.
ReadFive states in, every page had a hole — Haryana told us who may issue a challan but never what it costs, Jharkhand the reverse. Bengal prints both halves in one notification. Schedule I names who may compound, and for oversized vehicles under section 182B that is the Director of Transport alone, one officer for the whole state. Schedule II runs to twenty-six rows and six columns, because Bengal is the only state that prints the section you broke and the section you are charged under separately — which makes a challan testable on its face. We reproduce both schedules. Then overloading, which is deliberately left out: it runs on its own notification that suspends the permit on a second offence and cancels it on a third, with the registration suspended behind it. Also: a ₹10,000 figure where Jharkhand charges ₹1,000, three rows where a licence disqualification rides along with the payment, a rule 349 that may crack our five-state pattern, and a police page still quoting superseded notifications.
ReadA District Transport Officer in Patna wrote that traffic challans could not be taken up at a National Lok Adalat. Somebody took that letter to the High Court — and fourteen months later the State had notified a scheme letting old e-challans be closed at fifty per cent, with the Chief Justice directing where the counters should stand and that no money be taken in cash. This page traces the whole sequence from Rani @ Rani Tiwari v. State of Bihar to Notification No. 3261 of 30 April 2026, sets out exactly which offences the scheme covers — and the one it leaves out, which is overloading, the most expensive offence in the Act. Also: why the Lok Adalat did not reduce anything, a correction to our own earlier pages, section 200 missing for the fifth state running, and the Supreme Court order pulling from the other end.
ReadThree state pages in we had to keep telling readers the amounts could not be printed, because the document fixing them was unreachable or a photograph. Jharkhand broke that. Its Transport Department memo Pari. Ayu.-192/2016 carries a five-column schedule — section, offence, penalty before 1 September 2019, penalty after, and the compounding fee — and we reproduce all twenty-five rows. Then the harder half: section 185 and a dozen others are not in it at all, section 194A has an empty compounding cell, and a second speeding offence carries a licence impoundment instead of a sum. Also here: three rows whose penalty columns appear transposed, the three-month deferral of September 2019, the state rules of 2001 that will not open, a Delhi address printed on the state enforcement page, and the Supreme Court order of 28 September 2026 that turns an unpaid challan into a blocked registration.
ReadAcross three state pages we kept asking the same question — who is actually allowed to stop you and write this — and Haryana is the first state that answers it. Rule 225 of its 1993 rules, substituted in 2021, appoints seventeen categories of officer and lists the sections each may challan under. We reproduce the whole schedule. The police floor is an ASI, their list is shorter than the transport list, and overloading under section 194 does not appear against the police at all — it is transport department work. Two provisos matter: five officers cannot touch private buses, and police powers widen outside municipal limits. Section 200 is missing from the enabling provisions for the third state running, so the amounts come from a notification we could not find — and we say so rather than copying a rate list.
ReadOur second state page, and the finding at the top of it is one the High Court only said out loud in August 2026: Uttar Pradesh has no separate traffic police cadre, and the Bench asked the government to decide on creating one. The state’s own rules contain no compounding provision — section 200 is not even among their enabling sections — so the amount comes from a notification, dated June 2020, and the schedule everybody quotes online is older than the 2019 amendment. An appeal in a licensing matter goes to the Deputy Transport Commissioner of the Zone, not the RTO. Plus the High Court’s own Payment Setu portal across 74 district courts, the school-vehicle chapter nobody mentions, number portability, and why this page carries no compounding figures.
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