A traffic challan in Gujarat: the state that cut the deepest.

The bottom of the range

After nine states the useful thing this series can offer is no longer a figure; it is a range. One section of one central Act, and the amount a state will take to settle it runs from a hundred rupees to a thousand rupees with three months of your licence attached. Gujarat is the hundred-rupee end.

That matters practically rather than academically. If you drive across state lines, you are not crossing between slightly different prices. You are crossing between regimes that disagree about what the offence is worth by a factor of ten, and in one case about whether the requirement applies to you at all.

10 September 2019, and two days later

The amended Act commenced nationally on 1 September 2019. Nine days later, on 10 September 2019, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani announced that Gujarat would apply lower amounts. The repository that collects post-2019 compounding notifications records Gujarat against 12 September 2019.

Two dates, two days apart, and they are consistent with each other rather than in conflict: an announcement on the tenth, an instrument on the twelfth. We give both because a challan issued in that forty-eight hours is the only situation where the difference would matter, and because a page that quotes one date without the other invites the question.

The figures, as reported

Note the one row that did not move. Dangerous driving in a vehicle other than a three-wheeler or a light motor vehicle stayed at five thousand. A state that was cutting almost everything chose not to cut that, which tells you the exercise was selective rather than across the board.

Why we call them reported figures

Because that is what they are. These came from reporting of the announcement, not from a schedule we have read. Gujarat’s compounding notification sits in the repository as a scanned image we cannot extract text from, and the state transport site did not yield a readable copy.

We have printed them anyway, labelled, because the gap between them and other states is so wide that it is informative even approximately, and because leaving a reader with nothing is not neutral. What we will not do is dress them up as a schedule. If you are about to rely on a specific rupee figure here, get the notification.

The same offence, three states

Where the gap reaches ten times

Two rows do it. Triple riding under section 194C is a hundred rupees here and a thousand in West Bengal, where it also costs the rider three months of a licence. Breach of the pollution and safety standards under section 190(2) is a thousand rupees here for a small vehicle and ten thousand in Bengal, again with a three-month disqualification.

We flagged the Bengal figure for section 190 as an outlier when we wrote that page, comparing it with Jharkhand’s thousand. Gujarat confirms it from the other direction. Ten times the money, plus a licence consequence in one state and none in the other, for the same words in the same statute.

Was Gujarat allowed to do this

Yes, and the reason is the distinction our Karnataka page is built around, because Karnataka is where it was argued in public in the same weeks.

A state cannot alter the fine a court imposes on conviction. Those figures are in a central Act and a state law contradicting one would need the President’s assent. What a state does control, expressly, under section 200, is the compounding amount — what it will accept to close the offence without a trial. Every figure in the tables above is a compounding amount. Nothing in the Act was touched.

What did not move

The Act. That is the sentence to carry away from this page, and it applies to the helmet announcement as much as to the figures.

Section 194D is still in the Motor Vehicles Act. Section 129, which requires protective headgear, is still in the Motor Vehicles Act. Section 190 still carries what it carries. What Gujarat changed is the amount at which it will settle, and — on the reported version of December 2019 — whether it would enforce one requirement in towns. Neither of those is an amendment, and a reader who treats them as one is building on sand.

December 2019: the helmet announcement

On 4 December 2019, the State Transport Minister, R C Faldu, announced that helmets would be optional. His words as reported:

Read it carefully, because the sentence defines the exemption by naming what it excludes. If helmets remain compulsory on highways and panchayat roads, the exemption was for the roads that are neither — urban and municipal streets.

Where the exemption was said not to apply

State highways. National highways. Roads within panchayat limits. Three categories, and between them they cover most of the distance anybody actually rides outside a city.

They are also categories that are not painted on the road surface. A rider leaving Ahmedabad does not pass a sign announcing that section 194D has resumed. That by itself makes the exemption a thin thing to organise your riding around, quite apart from everything below.

Why we are careful with this one

So the honest position is narrow: an announcement was made, on a date we can give, by a minister we can name, in terms we have quoted. Everything beyond that — whether it was notified, under what power, and whether it survives — is something we do not know.

And what we are not saying

If you have a helmet challan from a city street

Then there is a real question to put, and it is worth putting in writing rather than at the roadside. Under which provision was the challan issued, and is the exemption announced in December 2019 in force for that area?

That is a specific question with a documented basis, and it costs nothing to ask. If it is answered with a notification, you have your answer either way. A written reply is the ordinary vehicle for it, and it is the document this page is built around.

Why a reply rather than an appeal

Because of where you are in the sequence. At the challan stage there is usually no order yet — nobody has decided anything against you, so there is nothing for an appellate authority to review. What exists is a demand you dispute.

The response to a disputed demand is a written reply that puts the point on the record while the matter is still soft: the section quoted, the figure demanded, the state notification you say applies, and where you were. An appeal comes later and only if something is actually decided. Filing the wrong one at the wrong time wastes the fee and, worse, the time.

Rule 107, in full

The first appeal procedure we could read

Across nine state pages this is the first time we have been able to tell a reader how an appeal is actually filed rather than merely which rule number governs it. Haryana, Jharkhand and Bihar defeated us completely on the appeal question. West Bengal gave us rule numbers with no text. Gujarat gives us four concrete things.

• In duplicate. Two copies, not one.
• As a memorandum, setting out the grounds of objection concisely. The rule asks for grounds, not a narrative.
• With a certified copy of the order. Not a photocopy of your copy — a certified one, which has to be applied for and takes time. Start that early.
• With the fee under rule 71.

Sub-rule (2) is the one people overlook and it is the most useful of the three. An appellant is entitled to a copy of any document filed with the Transport Authority connected with the order being appealed. That is a right to see the file you are arguing against, and it is worth exercising before the grounds are drafted rather than after.

The fee we could not find

Rule 107 points three times to the fee prescribed under rule 71, and we could not read rule 71. So we cannot tell you what filing an appeal costs, or what a copy of a document from the file costs.

Nor does rule 107 state a limitation period. That is the more important of the two gaps, because a fee you discover late is an inconvenience and a period you discover late is the end of the matter. Both are questions for the Transport Authority or an advocate practising there, and both should be asked on day one.

The other appellate rules

The rules name appellate authorities in four places and set out the manner of appeal in another four: rule 5 and rule 20 for driving licences, rule 25 and rule 37 for conductor licences, rule 41 and rule 58 for registration, and rule 107 with rule 108 for the transport permit chapter.

Only rule 107 came through readable. The others we can name and not quote, which at least tells you which number to ask about depending on what kind of order has arrived — and that is four more than we could offer on most of these pages.

Rule 239, and the gap we would most like to close

The Gujarat rules contain rule 239, headed powers of officers of the Motor Vehicles Department, with rule 240 on the performance of their functions and rule 241 on their uniform. We could not read any of the three; the copy we had truncated at each heading.

That is frustrating because rule 239 is precisely where a Haryana-style schedule would sit if Gujarat has one. Haryana’s equivalent names seventeen categories of officer and the sections each may act under, which is the single most useful thing on that page. Whether Gujarat prints anything comparable is the question on this page we would most like answered, and we cannot answer it.

The enabling-section test, and why it failed again

Every state page opens with the same mechanical check: read the recital at the head of the state’s motor vehicle rules and see whether section 200, the compounding provision, appears in it. Here we could not, for the third time: the copy begins directly at Chapter I with no preamble at all.

We note it rather than quietly dropping Gujarat from the tally, because a test that could not be run is a different thing from a test that came back negative, and blurring the two would make the pattern look stronger than the evidence does.

Where the count stands after nine states

Tested, section 200 absent — six. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and therefore Jharkhand which runs on Bihar’s rules, and Maharashtra. Six recitals, visibly drafted independently of one another, and not one of them containing the compounding provision.

Could not be tested — three. West Bengal, Karnataka and now Gujarat, in each case because the copy available carried no preamble. The pattern holds everywhere we could check it; we are simply not going to claim nine out of nine when we have six.

No compounding rule here

We looked, because two states have surprised us. West Bengal has a general rule 349 headed Compounding of Offences; Karnataka has three narrow composition rules for registration and transfer lapses, capped at a hundred rupees. Gujarat has neither that we could find.

So Gujarat is the ordinary case: compounding lives in a notification under section 200, which is a separate document that can be issued, amended and replaced without touching the rules at all. Which is exactly why the 2019 cut was possible, and exactly why nobody can tell you today what the current figures are without reading the current notification.

Rule 98A: if you drive for an app

One recent addition is worth knowing about. The Gujarat Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Rules 2023, notification G/PT/2022/5/MVD/102021/2608/KH dated 16 February 2023, made under section 212(1) and section 96(2)(xxviii), inserted rule 98A on the licensing of aggregators.

It applies the national Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines of 2020, makes the principal place of business the location of the competent authority, and requires an applicant aggregator to give an undertaking about grievances. It regulates the platform rather than the driver, so it does not change what you can be stopped for.

The thirty-day grievance clock

The operative number in rule 98A is thirty days. An aggregator must undertake to dispose of a passenger grievance within thirty days of receiving it, and the rule states that where a grievance is not redressed within that period, the failure shall be considered as a cause of action for the suspension of the licence.

Two readings follow. For a passenger whose complaint has gone nowhere, thirty days is the date to write down and the licensing authority is the place to escalate to. For a driver, the point is that your platform carries obligations in a document you have probably never been shown, and asking for a copy of them is reasonable.

What the one unchanged row tells you

Go back to the table for a moment. Every row was cut except one: dangerous driving in a vehicle that is neither a three-wheeler nor a light motor vehicle stayed at five thousand rupees.

That single exception does more work than it looks. It shows the exercise was not a blanket discount applied to a list; somebody went through the offences and decided which ones to leave alone. And the one left alone is the one most likely to involve a bus or a lorry driven dangerously, which is where the consequences fall on other people rather than on the rider.

Whether that was the reasoning we cannot say. But it is worth noticing that a state willing to price triple riding at a hundred rupees was not willing to move dangerous driving by a heavy vehicle at all, because it suggests the cut had a logic rather than being a round of across-the-board relief.

Two decisions, three months apart

Set the dates out and a shape appears. The amended Act commenced on 1 September 2019. Gujarat announced reduced amounts on the tenth, with the instrument recorded on the twelfth. On 4 December, the helmet announcement followed.

So within fourteen weeks this state moved twice, and the second move was of a different kind entirely. Reducing a compounding amount is something section 200 plainly permits. Announcing that a requirement will not be enforced in part of the state is not the same exercise, and the difference between the two is why this page treats them so differently — the first we report as a policy choice the state was entitled to make, the second as an announcement whose legal basis we could not find.

What a reader outside Gujarat should take from this

Mostly one thing, and it is the thing nine state pages have been building towards: there is no such thing as an Indian traffic fine. There is a central Act with ceilings, and then thirty-six separate decisions about what each offence is worth, taken at different times by different governments under different pressures.

Gujarat is the clearest proof because it sits at one end. When a rider who has only ever ridden here is stopped in Kolkata, the difference is not that the officer is stricter. It is that the same section carries ten times the money and a three-month licence consequence that does not exist at home. Nobody tells you that at a state border, and no national rate list could, because the thing it would have to describe does not exist.

The Supreme Court, 28 September 2026

One national direction now sits over every figure on this page, and it is recent enough that most people have not met it yet. Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K.V. Viswanathan, on 28 September 2026, in S. Rajaseekaran v. Union of India (2026 LiveLaw (SC) 1007), went at the recovery side rather than the issuing side. The arithmetic before the Bench was that roughly ₹49,194.05 crore remained unrecovered on e-challans across the country, against ₹26,175.05 crore that had come in.

With it: online services frozen while amounts are outstanding, registration renewal and duplicate registration barred, fitness certificates refused until pending fines are cleared, blacklisting on the Parivahan portal with no pollution certificate issued, transfer of ownership blocked, and the licence suspended from renewal on multiple violations.

Cheap to clear, expensive to keep

Those directions interact with low compounding amounts in a way that is particular to this state, and it is worth spelling out because it is counter-intuitive.

A hundred-rupee challan left unpaid can now block the transfer of a vehicle worth several lakhs. The registry does not weigh the size of the debt against the size of the consequence; an outstanding amount is an outstanding amount. So in the state with the lowest figures in this series, the gap between what a challan costs and what ignoring it costs is the widest it gets.

The practical instruction is unusually simple. Check the portal against your registration number, clear whatever is there — it will not be much — and keep the receipts.

Overloading, and a gap we will not guess at

Section 194 is the one question we keep asking and keep getting a different answer to, and Gujarat’s answer is simply missing from what we could read. The four we do have run like this: a straight price per excess tonne in Jharkhand; the same price in West Bengal but with the permit going on the second occasion and the registration behind it on the third; a price in Bihar that the state pointedly refused to discount when it halved everything else; and in Maharashtra, no price at all, because it sits on the list of offences that cannot be compounded.

Four states, four designs, nothing in the central Act requiring any of them. Adding a guess about a fifth would tell you less than the blank does.

A floor the state cannot go below

One question follows naturally from a hundred-rupee figure: is there anything stopping a state going lower still, or setting nothing at all? The answer is built into the structure rather than into any single number.

Compounding is permissive. Section 200 lets a state say which offences may be settled and at what sum; it does not oblige a state to offer the facility for anything. Maharashtra’s published list of offences that cannot be compounded is the proof of that — a state exercising the same power by declining to use it. So in principle a state could go as low as it liked, or offer nothing.

What it cannot do is reach past the compounding amount into the trial. Where no settlement happens, the matter goes to a magistrate and the Act’s own figures apply, untouched by whatever the state notified. That is the floor and the ceiling of the discretion: complete freedom over the settlement, none at all over the sentence.

Drink driving

Not compoundable, in Gujarat or anywhere in India. Section 185 sits outside the compounding scheme entirely, so no state notification can set an amount for it however low that state’s other figures are. A magistrate decides and a conviction carries a disqualification. Our page on drink driving cases sets out what follows.

Why there is no proper rate table

Because we have reported figures and not an instrument. The notification sits in the repository as a scan; the transport site gave us nothing readable. The ten rows above came from reporting of the announcement, and we have labelled them that way throughout rather than formatting them into something that looks official.

The difference matters most in this state, because the gap between the central figures and the Gujarat ones is so large that getting it wrong in either direction is expensive.

Why the Gujarat tables online disagree

They disagree more here than elsewhere, and for a traceable reason. Between the central figures of 1 September 2019, the reduced Gujarat figures of that month, and the helmet announcement in December, a table could be reproducing any of three positions — and a fourth if anything has changed since.

None of the tables we looked at names a notification or carries a date, so there is no way to tell which of the three it is showing. That is not a small defect in Gujarat; it is the difference between a hundred rupees and a thousand.

How to find what you owe

1. From the challan, reading the section and the amount together.
2. From the national challan portal against the registration number, which also shows anything else pending.
3. By comparing the amount with the state figures above. If it looks like the central figure, that is a question worth asking.
4. From the Transport Department in writing, asking for the compounding notification currently in force with its number and date. That is an RTI application and it is the only way to close the gap on this page.
5. From the court, if the matter has reached one, in which case the Act governs and the compounding amount is no longer the relevant number.

Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara

A compounding notification is state-wide, so the amounts do not change between cities. What may change by area, on the reported version of the December 2019 announcement, is the helmet position — because that announcement drew its line between urban roads on one side and highways and panchayat roads on the other.

That is a geographic distinction of a kind we have otherwise met only in Rajasthan, where the rank of the officer who may compound changes inside the Jaipur and Jodhpur Commissionerates. Two states, two completely different things made to depend on where you are standing.

Riding out of town

On the reported version, the requirement resumes the moment you are on a state highway, a national highway or a road within panchayat limits. Nothing announces that transition to a rider.

We are not going to pretend that is a manageable rule to ride by, and we are not going to pretend the safer course is unclear. It is the same course it was before December 2019.

If the vehicle has been seized

A separate proceeding under criminal procedure, decided by a magistrate rather than by any transport authority, and nothing on this page reaches it. Our page on vehicle release and superdari sets out the application and the time limits.

If the licence has been suspended

Establish the route first, because there are three and they do not share a remedy: a court disqualifying on conviction, a licensing authority suspending as an administrative act, or suspension from renewal under the September 2026 directions where violations have accumulated. Gujarat names an appellate authority for driving licence matters at rule 5, with the manner of appeal at rule 20, though neither text came through. Our page on licence suspension covers the court and administrative routes.

If the challan itself is wrong

Start with the national grounds, because they are the same here as anywhere and they are often the strongest. An electronic notice has to say certain things; it has to reach you inside a set period; and whatever equipment generated it has to be covered by a certificate the authority is obliged to hold. Those three are worked through on our page on disputing a challan.

Gujarat adds the sharpest state-specific ground in this series, and it follows from everything above: whether the amount demanded is the state figure or the central one. Where those differ by a factor of ten, that is not a technicality. An application to the authority is the alternative document where a reply is not the right shape.

Lok Adalat

Compoundable matters get disposed of there in bulk across the country. A Lok Adalat records a settlement and cannot cut a figure of its own; where a reduction exists it comes from a state notification, as it did in Bihar in 2026. We found no settlement scheme for Gujarat, which is unsurprising when the standing figures are already the lowest here. Our page on Lok Adalats sets out the distinction and what an award there actually is.

Nine states, side by side

• Rajasthan — rank and territory decide who can settle your challan.
• Uttar Pradesh — nothing disclosed, and the High Court found there is no dedicated traffic cadre to disclose anything about.
• Haryana — seventeen officer categories written into the rules, each with its own list of sections.
• Jharkhand — a five-column schedule of what everything costs.
• Bihar — half price, by gazette notification, after a writ petition, with a Chief Justice asking for the disposal figures.
• West Bengal — the only state to give officers and money in one instrument, and the only one to print what you broke beside what you are charged under.
• Maharashtra — the inverse list: the offences no payment will close.
• Karnataka — a ₹100 ceiling on two filing lapses, and the state where somebody asked where this power comes from in the first place.
• Gujarat — the deepest cut of the nine, and the only state to say a requirement simply would not be enforced in its towns.

How we checked this

The rules came from a bare-act source, read twice: once to establish what was there and whether anything preceded Chapter I, and once to ask for rules 239, 240 and 107 word for word. Only rule 107 came through, which is why it is quoted in full and the others are named. The 2023 amendment came from the same source with its notification number and date.

The September 2019 figures came from reporting of the Chief Minister’s announcement and are labelled as reported throughout. The 12 September date comes from the repository that collects post-2019 compounding notifications, which is a second and independent source for the same event. The helmet announcement came from a news report of 4 December 2019 carrying the minister’s own words, and we have flagged at length what we could not establish about it. The Supreme Court order was read from a law reporting service with the citation given.

What to do, in order

1. Read the section and the amount on the challan together, not separately.
2. Compare the amount with the state figures above. A tenfold difference is visible at a glance.
3. If it looks like the central figure, ask in writing which notification it comes from.
4. On a helmet challan, note exactly where you were, because the reported exemption turned on that and nothing else.
5. Do not treat the exemption as settled. Ask whether it is in force for that area.
6. Clear anything small that is pending, because since September 2026 a hundred rupees can block a transfer.
7. If an order has arrived rather than a challan, start the certified copy and find the limitation period the same day.
8. File an appeal under rule 107 in duplicate, as a memorandum, with the certified copy and the rule 71 fee.

What to keep

The challan with its section and the amount exactly as printed — in this state the amount is itself evidence. The registration number character for character. Where you were, on a helmet matter. Proof of payment for anything paid. The certified copy of any order, since rule 107 requires it and obtaining one takes time. Copies of anything you obtain from the Transport Authority file under rule 107(2). And the case number if a court has the matter.

Deliberately not on this page

Whatever is identical across the country has been left off: the statutory definitions, the conduct of a trial once a magistrate has the file, the electronic enforcement rules, the licensing chapter and the law of seizure and release. Each has its own page here, linked above where it becomes relevant. What remains is what belongs to Gujarat — the deepest cut in the series, an announcement nobody else made, and one appeal rule we could actually read.

When this needs an advocate

When an order rather than a challan has arrived and rule 107 is in play, because the form, the attachments and an unstated limitation period all have to be got right at once. When the matter has reached a court. When a commercial operation is exposed rather than one vehicle. And when a figure is being demanded that nobody will trace to a notification — which, given the size of the gap here, is the most likely dispute on this page.

What we do

Two things, kept separate. The directory introduces you to advocates at no cost, hides your number until one accepts, and earns us nothing from either side. And we draft. The document this page is built around is the written reply — the paper that puts a disputed figure, or a helmet challan from a city street, on the record while the matter is still at the challan stage. Alongside it: an RTI request for the notification currently in force, a written application to the authority, and an appeal once an order exists to appeal against.

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

What we charge

Questions are free, and so is the introduction to an advocate. Every document we write shows its price on its own page before you order it, and no part of it is a share of anybody’s professional fee. On a hundred-rupee challan there is nothing here worth buying, and we would rather say that than find something.

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

Questions people ask