Politician forced to declare bankruptcy due to traffic fine bigger than his ‘declared assets’
Bonnet Bots Untrue News Service
Local politician Vahan Thikparkkar got a big shock of his life when an auto-rickshaw registered under his name was fined by the traffic police for multiple violations over the past month, including wrong parking and over-crowding. Like most politicians, he had no car, at least on paper. His ‘Declared assets’ were only 27,000 rupees, and an auto-rickshaw. Unfortunately, he was challaned by a traffic cop new to the area, in the enthusiasm of new traffic fines. Recent increases in traffic fines in India have caused mayhem in the country, with average fines ranging from 23,000 to 55,000 rupees. “Traffic police no longer waste their time on cases less than 20,000 rupees”, quoted a local when the Blue Bonnet Bot questioned some people in an effort to understand the background of this case.
Bonnet Bot speaks to the politician
“I have very meager declared assets. We need to show our simplicity in whatever we make public” said Vahan Thikparkkar as he spoke to the Blue Bonnet Bot, who interviewed him after Vahan’s bankruptcy filing. “I thought that the opposition will pull me up for breaking traffic laws, but they instead questioned my ability to pay the traffic fine in spite of my ‘official’ assets being less than the fine amount. The traffic police fined me 29,950 rupees, which was leaked to the media by these unscrupulous politicians. Now with declared assets of 27,000 rupees, I cannot justify paying the fine AND not going bankrupt. So I had to file for bankruptcy to save face. After all, elections are only 37 months away.” Vahan further added that this attitude of the traffic police to actually charge the unbelievable amounts for traffic fines instead of ‘settling the matter like the earlier days’ felt almost illegal and totally unfair, especially to ‘poor’ victims like him, who in spite of having money, had no way to declare it. “Mid-level politicians like me have to show our austerity forcefully because leading politicians in the country don’t even own a single 4-wheeler on paper”, he stated.
File photo of Vahan Thikparkkar’s overcrowded auto-rickshaw being used for party work
When Bonnet Bot questioned Vahan’s campaign manager about Vahan’s background, he learned that as per the official version of his success story, Vahan was an ordinary auto-rickshaw driver who defied all circumstances to become a successful politician. “And he still has kept the auto-rickshaw to prove it”. This was necessary to maintain his reputation in an ever-competitive political world where a tea seller became the Prime Minister of the country, causing poor souls from the world of politics to come up with various stories to sound relevant in the new scheme of things.
The twitter handle of a competing political party had immediately tweeted after the incident, “Daal mein kuch kaala hai, aur yeh ab public ko saaf nazar aayega” (which can be translated to read “something black has fallen into a dish made with lentils or other split pulses, and the non-private people will dirt-free see it coming”).
Yuhi Chuglikar, a member of the opposition party, stated strictly on conditions of anonymity that ‘everyone knows that you cannot get a ticket to contest elections unless you have a Fortuner vehicle, but many politicians, except those from my party of course, lie about their wealth in the asset declaration before polls’.
At the time of going to press, Vahan was busy enquiring whether he was eligible for the Atal Pension scheme of the central government, so that he would get something to show as the source of income for his ‘comfortable lifestyle’.
Disclaimer: The above article is NOT real news, and may seem real only because of the strange fact that fact is stranger than fiction. site1.bonnetbots.com is a satire, parody, and entertainment website, and the news is totally a work of fiction, except for some facts, such as those mentioned in sections ‘Did You Bonnet Know’ and ‘Bonnet Bots fail to understand’ or marked as #NotSatire.
Image credit: Dean Moriarty from Pixabay (beggar image); Devanath from Pixabay (auto-rickshaw image)
