Delhi Traffic Police to acquire Simputers

The Delhi Traffic Police is all set to become tech savvy with the
introduction of lowcost portable handheld Simputers. The depart­­­ment
intends to purchase 100 Simputers to be used for field transactions by the
police officers like writing out challans and other services related with smart
card-based driving license and vehicle registration certificate (RC). The
department had floated a tender for the procurement of Simputers in January this
year.

Simputer, which was first launched in the year 2002, is distributed by two
Bangalore-based firms - Encore Software and Picopeta Simputers.

According to Prashant Anantraman, Business Dev-elopment Manager, Encore
Software, Delhi Traffic Police's decision is a great opportunity for Simputer
to get the desired recognition in the market. “We have already initiated talks
with Delhi Traffic Police to explore the opportunity of bagging the order for
supplying Simputers. The device will allow the traffic wing of Delhi Police in
eliminating the laborious paper work involved while issuing challans,” said
Anantraman.

A senior Delhi Traffic Police official said that encouraged by the success
story of Bangalore traffic police, the Delhi Police have also initiated the move
to introduce Simpu­ters. Delhi Police had a meeting with the Bangalore
policemen late last year and decided to introduce Simputers. “Around 100
policemen have already been trained on how to use the Simputer and the benefits
of this gadget,” the official said.

Encore Software has already supplied 30 Simputers to Bangalore traffic police
department. Encore claims to have proposed to the Bangalore traffic police to
adopt Simputers some 20 months back soon after which the department placed an
order with the manufacturer.

Simputers once deployed for on field operations of the traffic police will
minimize violation of traffic rules and will drastically reduce the number of
fatal accidents on Delhi roads. The device perhaps would also bring transparency
in the traffic department since traffic police would no longer be able to
negotiate with erring motorists on their own.

Simputer is a mobile portable computer that works on high speed even on
minimalist hardware support. Simputer only requires wireless network connection
and backend server to become operational.

Ajnali Choudhary