A traffic challan in Andhra Pradesh: a different compounding power, and the only state that publishes both halves.

Two states, one parent, two different documents

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were a single state until 2014. Both transport departments run broadly the same website, built on the same system, and both carry a link labelled Compounding.

Our Telangana page opens that link and finds G.O. Ms. No. 108 of 18 August 2011: a section 200 notification, eighteen road offences, the officers who may compound, a ceiling proviso.

Open Andhra Pradesh’s and you get G.O. Ms. No. 332 of 13 November 2008, which is about something else entirely. Not section 200. Not road offences. Not even the same chapter of the Act.

Neither superseded the other, and it would be a mistake to treat the 2008 one as an older draft of the 2011 one. The 2011 order superseded three notifications of 2006. It did not touch the 2008 order, because the 2008 order was never doing the same job.

What G.O. Ms. No. 332 actually is

A government order of the Transport, Roads & Buildings (TR.I) Department, dated 13 November 2008, signed by A.K. Parida, Principal Secretary to Government. Its own title line reads, as printed:

The Act is of 1988, not 1989, and the rules are rules rather than an Act. Both slips are in the original and we have not corrected them. What matters is the operative part, which is precise:

What it does is substitute the entries in the Table under the proviso to rule 217 of the Andhra Pradesh Motor Vehicles Rules 1989.

Section 86(5), and why it is not section 200

Section 86 is the provision under which a permit can be suspended or cancelled for a breach of its conditions. Sub-section (5) allows an amount to be accepted instead of taking that action.

So the money here is not a price for an offence. It is what a transport authority will take in place of going after the permit. That is a different transaction with a different thing on the other side of it.

Why two powers are cited, not one

The enabling clause names sub-section (2) of section 86 read with section 96. That pairing is doing something specific and it is worth a paragraph.

Section 86 is the operative power — it is what allows a permit to be suspended or cancelled, and sub-section (5) is what allows money to be taken instead. But section 86 does not by itself let a state write a schedule of amounts into its rules. Section 96 is the general rule-making power for the permits chapter, and that is what carries the schedule.

So one provision supplies the authority to act and the other supplies the authority to write it down. A reader does not need to care about that distinction until somebody argues the schedule does not bind, at which point the pairing is the answer: the figures are in a rule, made under a rule-making power, not in a departmental circular.

It also explains why these amounts live in the rules while Telangana’s live in a standalone notification. Section 200 is exercised by notification; section 96 is exercised by making rules. Different plumbing, and it is the reason seven states’ rules could be tested for section 200 and come back empty while still containing compounding figures of other kinds.

A third compounding power

Fourteen states in, that makes three distinct machineries called compounding, and they have nothing to do with each other beyond the word.

• Section 200 — road offences, set by a state notification. Telangana publishes one; seven other states were tested and it was absent from their rules, which is how we established that this power is exercised by standalone notification.
• Composition in the rules under section 177 — filing lapses. Karnataka by the calendar month, Tamil Nadu in bands of days, Uttarakhand by the week and by vehicle class.
• Section 86(5) — permit breaches, in place of suspension or cancellation. This page, and nowhere else in the series.

A reader who has been told “compounding” by somebody at a counter is entitled to ask which of the three they mean, because the answer decides what happens if they refuse.

What is actually at stake

This is the part worth being blunt about. A section 200 challan costs money and then it is over. A section 86(5) matter is a conversation about whether you keep operating.

For somebody running one bus or three lorries, the permit is the business. The schedule below looks like a list of small sums, and for a private motorist it would be. For an operator it is the price of not having the thing that lets the vehicle earn.

That asymmetry is why the written reply matters here in a way it does not on most of these pages, and we come back to it below.

The stage carriage schedule

As printed, in the order the notification gives them.

Four breaches sit at the top figure of five thousand rupees: an unauthorised route, no tax, no fitness certificate, and letting somebody drive without a valid licence. Notice what those four have in common. Each of them is something the permit itself was supposed to guarantee.

Two hundred rupees an hour

“Non adherence to the Schedule of timings — ₹200 Per Hour Proportionally” is the row most likely to be overlooked and the one most likely to recur.

Every other figure in the stage carriage group is a one-off. This one accrues, and the word proportionally means a part of an hour is charged as a part rather than rounded up — which cuts both ways, since it also means there is no minimum unit below which it stops.

For a route operator this is the clause that turns a bad week into a number. It is also the clause that explains why a stage carriage permit’s schedule of timings is not a suggestion.

The heavy goods schedule

Compare it against the stage carriage list and the priorities invert. An unauthorised route costs a bus five thousand and a lorry one thousand. Not having tax costs a bus five thousand and a lorry one thousand. The state is plainly more exercised about a passenger service straying from its permit than about a goods vehicle doing the same, which makes sense if you think about who is sitting in the back.

Overloading, finally priced

Thirteen pages have ended with the same admission: we could not establish how this state treats overloading, and four states had gone four different ways, so we would not guess a fifth.

Here it is, and it is priced with more precision than anywhere else in the series:

A flat component and a marginal component. Five hundred kilograms over and it is two thousand five hundred; two tonnes over and it is four thousand. The marginal rate means there is no cliff and no point at which it stops being worth measuring.

But the important thing is which power it sits under. This is not section 194. It is section 86(5), which means the real alternative on the table is not a prosecution — it is the permit. Jharkhand and West Bengal price overloading per excess tonne under section 194, and West Bengal escalates to suspending the permit on a second occasion. Andhra Pradesh starts from the permit end.

The row nobody else has

Five hundred rupees for every big animal over the permitted number, and a hundred for every small one. For a tractor trailer, two hundred and fifty per big animal above two, and a hundred per small animal above ten.

We have read schedules from thirteen other states and nothing like this appears in any of them. It tells you what the drafters expected these vehicles to be carrying, and it is a reminder that a rule written for a state’s actual roads looks different from one written in the abstract.

The numbers above two and above ten in the tractor trailer group are the only place in the schedule where a permitted baseline is written into the row rather than left to the permit.

Tractor trailers

The tractor trailer overload row has no flat component at all — fifty rupees for every hundred kilograms and nothing else. A tonne over costs five hundred rupees, where the same excess on a heavy goods vehicle would be three thousand.

The fraction rule

Rather than write out two more schedules, the notification does this:

So a light goods vehicle with a fitness lapse is one thousand six hundred and sixty-six rupees and a bit, being a third of five thousand. The notification does not say how that is rounded, which is the kind of gap that gets resolved at a counter rather than on paper.

It is an efficient piece of drafting and it is the second fraction rule in the series after Uttarakhand’s rates by vehicle class. The difference is that Uttarakhand wrote each class out; Andhra Pradesh derives two classes from a third.

“Other offences”

Every group ends with one: a hundred rupees per offence for a stage carriage, fifty rupees for each item of offence for goods vehicles and tractor trailers.

It is worth knowing that row exists before somebody applies it to you. A schedule with a catch-all is not a closed list, and the practical effect is that a breach nobody thought to name is still compoundable — which is usually in your favour, since the alternative was the permit.

The second document

Beside the compounding link sits one labelled Prosecution, dated March 2010. It is a table of fifty-seven offences in four columns: serial number, offence, penal section, and punishment expressed as imprisonment or fine.

No other state in this series publishes this. Several publish what you can pay. Maharashtra publishes a short list of what you cannot. Andhra Pradesh publishes the whole of the other half, and then adds four notes that are more valuable than the table.

Note one: what cannot be compounded

That sentence is worth more to most readers than any figure on this page. If your matter is on that list, there is no counter to go to, no amount to negotiate and no scheme that will ever reach it. The only question is what happens in court.

Two states, two inverse lists

This is the first time in the series we can set two states’ non-compoundable lists side by side, and the result is more interesting than either on its own.

Six sections appear on both. Two states that have never coordinated arrived independently at the same core: drink driving, driving without a permit, and the 182-A and 190 provisions. That convergence is a stronger signal than either list by itself, and it is the closest thing this series has found to a national floor on what cannot be bought off.

The divergences are just as telling. Maharashtra will not compound overweight; Andhra Pradesh prices it, under a different power, in the schedule above. The same conduct is an absolute prohibition in one state and a published fee in the other.

Note two, and a consequence that is not money at all

The third of the four notes is easy to skip and should not be. It deals with a vehicle used for hire or reward without the licence that permits it, and the consequence it points to is not a fee.

It refers to section 19-A and to suspension of the vehicle’s registration under section 53.

This matters more now than when the note was written. Since September 2026 an outstanding entry can block a renewal or a transfer anyway; a suspension under section 53 does it directly and by order. For anybody running a vehicle outside what its papers allow, that note is the sentence to read twice.

The two sections Andhra Pradesh adds

Go back to the comparison above. Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh share six non-compoundable sections. Andhra Pradesh adds two that Maharashtra does not: 187 and 193.

Section 187 is the one that should make a reader stop. It concerns the failure to comply with the duties cast on a driver after an accident — stopping, and doing what the Act requires about the injured and about reporting. Andhra Pradesh has decided that no payment closes that.

It is a defensible line and arguably the clearest moral judgement anywhere in the fourteen schedules we have read. Driving badly is compoundable in most states. Driving into somebody and leaving is, in this state, something only a court disposes of.

Section 193 is quieter and aimed at a different person entirely: agents and canvassers operating without a licence. It is not about a driver at all, which makes its presence on a list of non-compoundable driving offences worth noticing. Somebody drafting this thought the unlicensed intermediary was a problem that should not be settled across a desk.

Neither section appears on Maharashtra’s list, and Maharashtra’s two additions — overweight and section 201 — are both things Andhra Pradesh prices. The four differences between the two lists are not random: each state has refused to put a price on the thing it considers least forgivable, and they do not agree about what that is.

Note four, and why it changes everything

Read that against everything above. Every figure in the stage carriage, heavy goods and tractor trailer tables is not what you will be charged. It is the least you can be charged.

Thirteen pages of this series have treated a published figure as the answer to the question “what does this cost”. Andhra Pradesh says, in its own note, that the published figure is only the bottom of a range.

Floor, ceiling, and now a floor inside the floor

Three consecutive state pages have each supplied one piece of the same structure, and none of the three governments was trying to.

• Odisha showed, across seventeen rows without exception, that it would not settle below the statutory minimum the Act prescribes.
• Telangana wrote into its notification that the compounding fee shall not exceed the maximum fine prescribed in the relevant penal section.
• Andhra Pradesh now says its own published figures are minimums, and that more may be taken up to that same statutory maximum.

Put the three together and the whole range is described, from the Act’s floor to the Act’s ceiling, with the published schedule sitting somewhere near the bottom of it rather than being the answer. That is a complete picture, assembled out of three documents written for unrelated reasons.

What a minimum means in practice

It means the figure in the table is a position, not a price, and that the gap between the published figure and the statutory maximum is discretion exercised by somebody.

The sensible response to both is the same: put the position in writing before paying. A written reply that sets out the breach, the class of vehicle, the schedule row and the figure you say applies turns a discretion exercised at a desk into a decision somebody has to record.

The tractor-trailer concession, inverted

Note three says a tractor-trailer combination used commercially attracts fifty per cent of the specified rates.

Now set that against Telangana’s 2011 notification, whose first proviso halves the rate for a tractor-trailer combination owned by agriculturists and not used for hire or reward.

The same fifty per cent, attached to opposite conditions. One halves it because the vehicle is commercial; the other halves it because the vehicle is not. We are not going to reconcile them — they are different documents under different powers, written two and three years apart in a state that has since split. We are flagging it because if somebody quotes you a fifty per cent tractor-trailer concession, the first question is which document they are reading.

Selected rows from the prosecution table

As printed. These are the 2010 figures and the Act was amended in 2019, so read them as what the state published rather than what a court would impose now.

Note that overloading appears twice on this page under two different powers and at two different figures — two thousand rupees plus a thousand per excess tonne on the prosecution side under section 194, and two thousand plus a hundred per hundred kilograms on the compounding side under section 86(5). The second works out at a thousand per tonne as well, which is a tidier correspondence than it first looks.

Section 201, and the second hourly charge

Fifty rupees per hour plus towing charges for keeping a disabled vehicle in a public place so as to obstruct traffic.

This is the second hourly charge on the page, after the two hundred rupees per hour for a stage carriage missing its timings, and the second appearance of section 201 in the series. Maharashtra has it on its non-compoundable list; Andhra Pradesh does not, which means the same breakdown is a payable matter in one state and a court matter in the other.

The towing charges are the part to watch. They are not fixed anywhere in the document, which means the predictable element of this row is the small one.

Two documents, both pre-2019

The compounding schedule is from 2008. The prosecution table is from 2010. The Motor Vehicles Act was substantially amended with effect from 1 September 2019, rewriting penalties across the Act.

We could not establish that either document has been revised since. What the department publishes under Penalties is what is described above.

The practical consequence is narrow and worth stating plainly. The compounding figures are not obviously affected by the 2019 amendment, because they sit under section 86(5) and are the state’s own figures rather than derived from the Act’s penalties. The prosecution table is a different matter: it reproduces the Act’s own punishments, and those changed.

Both successor states publish old documents

Telangana’s published compounding notification is from 2011. Andhra Pradesh’s is from 2008 with a prosecution table from 2010. Both departments maintain their sites; neither publishes anything on this subject from after the 2019 amendment.

If a figure you are quoted does not match what is published, that is not by itself evidence of an error. It may simply mean the published document is not the current one. Either way the question is the same and it is worth asking in writing.

No section 200 notification here

We did not find one for Andhra Pradesh. This page therefore carries no ordinary road-offence rate table — nothing for a helmet, a seat belt, a red light or a mobile phone. What it has is the permit-side schedule and the prosecution table, and we are not going to fill the gap with figures from a commercial website.

Telangana’s 2011 section 200 notification was made for undivided Andhra Pradesh, so historically it is common ground. Whether it still operates here after the division, and whether anything has replaced it, is precisely what we could not establish.

What to ask, and how

1. Whether the table under rule 217 has been revised since G.O. Ms. No. 332 of 13 November 2008, and if so by which order.
2. Whether any notification under section 200 of the Act is in force for Andhra Pradesh, and its number and date.
3. In a live matter: which row of the schedule is being applied, and whether the figure demanded is the schedule figure or a higher amount under note four.

The first two are an RTI application and the answer serves everybody in the state. The third belongs in a written reply, because it is about your own matter and the answer needs to be on your file.

If the permit has been suspended instead

Then section 86(5) was either not offered or not accepted, and the matter has reached the stage the whole schedule exists to avoid.

That is a different problem and a worse one. A compounding fee is a transaction; a suspension is an order, and orders are challenged rather than negotiated. It is also the point at which an advocate stops being optional, because what follows has a forum, a form and a period.

Where a permit appeal goes

To the State Transport Appellate Tribunal, which Andhra Pradesh maintains as the southern states generally do.

We could not obtain the rules governing the period for filing or the fee, and that is an honest gap listed below. What we can say is the thing that matters most when a period is unknown: apply for the certified copy of the order the day it arrives, because every appeal period in this series that we have been able to read runs from the date of the order and not from the date you decided to appeal. An appeal is the document once an order exists.

The Supreme Court, 28 September 2026

In S. Rajaseekaran v. Union of India, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 1007, decided on 28 September 2026, the Court addressed unpaid electronic challans nationally.

Alongside it, a range of consequences for non-payment was approved: transport services frozen, a registration renewal or duplicate certificate withheld, fitness refused, a transfer blocked, and a licence renewal suspended where violations have accumulated.

Why September 2026 is worse for an operator

For a private motorist those consequences are inconvenient. For a permit holder they are existential, and the reason is fitness.

A goods vehicle without a current fitness certificate cannot lawfully work. If an outstanding entry can block a fitness renewal, then an unpaid compounding fee of a few thousand rupees can stop a vehicle earning entirely — and the vehicle still costs money while it stands.

That is the calculation to make before leaving a section 86(5) matter open. The fee is the small number in it.

No settlement scheme — and the messages that say otherwise

We found no discount or settlement scheme for Andhra Pradesh. Neighbouring states have run them — Telangana in 2023-24, Odisha in 2025, Bihar in 2026 — and nothing comparable surfaced here.

Messages claiming large discounts circulate anyway, and they do not respect state borders. Telangana’s police have had to call such claims fake and fraudulent more than once. The test is the same wherever you are: if you cannot name the authority that announced it and find it on an official site, treat it as false — and never pay a challan through a link that arrived with the message.

Drink driving

Section 185 is on the non-compoundable list, which is the whole answer. There is no amount, no counter and no scheme that reaches it anywhere in India. The prosecution table gives the punishment the state published: six months or two thousand rupees or both for a first offence, and two years or three thousand or both for a second within three years. A magistrate decides and the licence consequence follows the conviction. Our page on drink driving cases follows the sequence from the roadside test.

If you are not an operator

Half of this page is for permit holders and the other half is for anybody.

The rule 217 schedule will not touch you if you drive a private car. The prosecution table and its notes will: note one tells any driver which charges cannot be settled at all, and that is worth knowing before somebody suggests otherwise.

What this page cannot give a private motorist is the everyday compounding figure for a helmet or a red light, because Andhra Pradesh does not publish one that we could find. On that question the honest answer is the gap.

Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati

The rules are state-wide and the schedule reads identically everywhere. What changes is which transport authority holds your permit file.

For a stage carriage operator that office matters more than usual, because the schedule of timings against which the two-hundred-rupee-per-hour row is measured is the one attached to your permit by that authority. Two operators on parallel routes can be measured against different schedules.

If the vehicle has been impounded

That is outside this page entirely. Impoundment and release run on the criminal procedure code and a magistrate decides, not a transport authority, and no compounding fee produces a vehicle. The application and the periods are on our vehicle release and superdari page.

If the licence has been suspended

Establish which of three things happened, because they do not share a remedy: a court disqualifying on conviction, a licensing authority acting on its own motion, or a renewal withheld because violations have accumulated. Note that a licence matter and a permit matter are different proceedings before different authorities, and an operator can have both at once. Our page on licence suspension covers the court and administrative routes.

If the challan itself is wrong

For an electronic notice the national grounds apply: whether it carries what the law requires, whether it was served inside the period, and whether the device behind it is certified. Our page on disputing a challan takes each in turn.

For a section 86(5) matter the questions are different and more specific: which permit condition is said to have been breached, which row of the schedule is being applied, what class the vehicle falls in, and whether the figure demanded is the schedule figure or a higher one. All four belong in a written reply.

Fourteen states, and three ways to compound

The running answer has changed shape again, so here it is as it now stands.

Three powers, three alternatives, three completely different levels of risk — and all three get described to the public as “compounding”. If there is one thing to carry away from fourteen states, it is that the word tells you almost nothing until you know which provision is behind it.

How we checked this

Both documents come from the Andhra Pradesh transport department’s own website, from the two links it publishes under Penalties. The enabling clause, the title line, the schedule rows and the four notes are quoted as printed, including the slips in the title.

The schedule was transcribed group by group rather than summarised. We have reproduced the stage carriage, heavy goods and tractor trailer groups in full; the contract carriage, educational institution bus and private service vehicle groups exist in the document but we could not read their rows, and that is listed as a gap rather than glossed over.

The comparison with Maharashtra’s non-compoundable list is ours, built by setting the two published lists against each other. The comparison with Telangana’s notification is also ours, and we have been careful to say that neither document supersedes the other.

What to do, in order

1. Work out whether this is a permit matter under section 86(5) or an ordinary road offence. They go to different places.
2. If it is a permit matter, identify your class of vehicle, because the schedule is grouped by it.
3. Find the row. If the vehicle is a medium or light goods vehicle, take the heavy goods figure and halve or third it.
4. Check whether the section is on the non-compoundable list, in which case none of this applies.
5. Read the figure as a minimum, not a price, and ask which figure is being applied and on what basis.
6. Put that in writing before paying anything, and keep the reply.
7. Ask for a receipt that names the rule and the row, not just an amount.
8. If an order has already been passed against the permit, apply for the certified copy the same day.

What to keep

The permit itself, with its conditions and its schedule of timings, because that is the document the breach is measured against. The notice or demand, with whatever row it cites. The weighment slip if overloading is alleged, since the fee is calculated on the excess. Anything in writing about which figure is being applied and why. The receipt naming the rule. And the certified copy of any order, with the date you applied for it.

Deliberately not on this page

Everything identical across the country has been kept off: the statutory definitions, what a prosecution looks like once a magistrate has the file, the rules on electronic notices, the licensing chapter and the law of seizure and release. Each has a page of its own here, linked above where it arises. What is left belongs to Andhra Pradesh — a compounding power this series had not met, a schedule priced by what the vehicle is and what it carries, the only published prosecution table in fourteen states, and a note that quietly turns every figure above it into a starting point.

When this needs an advocate

When the permit is in play rather than a fee, because what follows is an order and a tribunal. When a section on the non-compoundable list has been charged, because there is no payment route at all. When a fleet is exposed rather than one vehicle. Not for reading a row off a schedule, and not for the written reply that asks which figure is being applied.

What we do

Two things, neither of which is practising law. We draft documents, and we run a directory where describing a problem costs nothing.

On this page the useful document is usually a written reply — because at the section 86(5) stage there is a notice and a figure but no order yet, and a reply is what shapes the decision rather than challenging it afterwards. Where an order has already been made, an appeal is the document. Where the question is what is currently in force, an RTI application is the cheapest way to find out.

Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.

What we could not verify

• Whether the rule 217 table has been revised since 13 November 2008.
• Whether any section 200 notification is in force for Andhra Pradesh — so there is no ordinary road-offence rate table on this page.
• The full text of rule 217 and the proviso its table sits under.
• Which officers may compound under section 86(5), and at what rank.
• The rows for contract carriages, educational institution buses and private service vehicles.
• How the one-half and one-third fractions are rounded.
• Any number or issuing authority on the prosecution document beyond its March 2010 date.
• The period and fee for an appeal to the State Transport Appellate Tribunal.
• Any settlement or discount scheme for Andhra Pradesh.
• Any Andhra Pradesh High Court decision dealing directly with section 86(5) compounding.

What we charge

Nothing for asking and nothing for being put in front of an advocate. A document’s price is published on its own service page before anything is ordered, and no part of what we earn comes out of an advocate’s fee. On a permit matter the document is usually worth its cost many times over, and on a hundred-rupee “other offences” row it is not — we will say which of those you are in.

Questions people ask