Telangana sets up TG-TMARS to overhaul traffic management, road, and rail safety

The government issued G.O.Ms.No.135 on Thursday. The bureau will be headquartered in Hyderabad and headed by an officer of ADGP or IGP rank. It will function under the State Road Safety Council, chaired by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, while administrative and disciplinary control will remain with the Director General of Police.

TG-TMARS will have two principal wings — Traffic and Road & Rail Safety — and will oversee traffic management, electronic enforcement, e-challans, highway patrolling, road-crash investigation and enforcement analytics. Its jurisdiction will cover more than 32,000 km of roads and over 1.8 crore registered vehicles, besides policing-related safety aspects of Metro Rail and railway travel.

A key feature is the designation of a Road Crash Response Officer at every police station, with round-the-clock responsibility for responding to crashes, securing accident scenes and facilitating the shifting of injured persons to hospitals within the critical “golden hour”. Crash details will also be recorded on the designated digital platform.

The government has also provided for Highway Patrol Units on National and State Highways, Expressways and the Outer Ring Road. Units covering more than 50 km of highway will be equipped with patrol vehicles, dashboard cameras, automatic number-plate recognition and speed-detection systems.

A dedicated Traffic Management Fund will receive 40% of police compounding fees and traffic-fine collections under the Motor Vehicles Act and Rules. The fund will support electronic enforcement equipment, patrol vehicles, traffic control rooms, technology, personnel training and emergency road works.

The new structure also provides for additional traffic leadership posts in police commissionerates and districts, while existing traffic wings and e-challan operations will come under TG-TMARS oversight. The bureau is required to be operationalised within six months.