When the state run PSU running the project failed to pay its bills, Jio cut connectivity to the cameras and the entire automated enforcement chain went dark. The High Court has now stepped in.
Kerala's AI-enabled traffic enforcement network, rolled out with fanfare in April 2023 as part of the Motor Vehicles Department's automated traffic enforcement system, has effectively gone dark. The cameras themselves are still mounted at intersections across the state. They are simply no longer transmitting the footage that lets control rooms issue fines for speeding, signal violations, and other offences.
The reason has nothing to do with the technology. Jio, the private internet service provider carrying the data from cameras back to control rooms, disconnected connectivity to the network because Keltron, the Kerala state-run electronics PSU managing the project, failed to clear outstanding payments. Keltron is awaiting more than Rs 90 crore in pending dues from the state government, according to Deccan Chronicle.
The single-point-of-failure is striking. A statewide automated enforcement system, built at public expense and held up as a model for the rest of India, was neutralised by a routine billing dispute in a multi-tiered government supply chain: state government → Keltron → Jio. None of the three links needed to act maliciously. The first simply did not pay the second, so the second could not pay the third, so the third pulled the plug.
Kerala High Court intervened on June 19, 2026, directing the state government and the Motor Vehicles Department to release dues to the private firm within a month. The Hindu and Live Law report the quarterly payment obligation to the private vendor is Rs 36 crore; that figure describes the private firm's dues, not the larger Rs 90 crore Keltron figure for the state PSU's separate arrears.
The court's involvement lays bare a structural problem that the deployment narrative never addressed. The project runs on a BOOT (build-own-operate-transfer) model implemented statewide, with the firm selected via transparent tender, according to Onmanorama. That model only works as long as the government pays on time. The contractor has continued technical support despite financial distress, but goodwill has limits.
The dysfunction is not new. By December 2024, around 300 of Kerala's 400 speed cameras were already reported non-functional, with maintenance dues to Keltron pending, Onmanorama reported at the time. The June 2026 disconnection is the same payment-chain failure escalated into a complete evidence blackout.
The operational consequence is concrete: until connectivity is restored, authorities cannot detect fresh traffic violations or issue camera-backed fines. A high-tech enforcement system has, for the moment, reverted to whatever the human police force on the ground can catch. A PIL challenging the system itself was earlier dismissed, but the contractor's separate plea for payment is what finally pushed the High Court to seek the state's response.
What to watch next: whether the state clears the Rs 36 crore quarterly payment within the court's one-month window, whether Keltron's separate Rs 90 crore arrears are addressed at the same time, and whether the project architecture is restructured so that a future billing dispute cannot again black out the entire enforcement chain.