With thousands of vehicles added to the roads of India every month, the Regional Transport Office (RTO) are responsible for issuing the registration numbers. Each vehicle gets a unique registration number and if an owner wants to keep an old registration number for a new car, they can do so by transferring the registration number to the new car and get a new number for the old car. This ensures that two vehicles do not get the same number plate.
Two Mahindra XUV500 that look identical have been seized from Sainik Colony, Jammu for having identical number plates as reported by Jammu Links. Both the vehicles were parked at different locations when the cops seized the vehicles. The incident was reported only a few days after a similar incident involving two identical Hyundai Verna cars were seized from the same area.
The police have said that forged documents must have been used to get the duplicate number plate. However, it is not clear who is at the fault. It can be the dealership or the officials at RTO who gave the duplicate number plate. It should be noted that both the vehicles have identical body colour but one of them is a pre-facelift model with the older headlamps while the other gets the new headlamps. It also seems that the vehicle with the newer headlamps has the High-Security Registration Plate (HSRP), which is enforced by the authorities to curb such incidents. Earlier this year, the transport department of the J&K government announced May 15 as the deadline for affixing the HSRP.
Such cases are quite unique as using a fake number plate on the vehicle is illegal and the vehicle can get seized, which is exactly what happened in this case. Earlier, both the Hyundai Verna sedans were also seized by the police and the RTO officials said that they will look into the matter. However, the exact culprit behind such practices is not known.
Issuing a new registration plate requires the payment of road tax, registration tax and various other taxes. It is quite possible that the owner of the vehicle did not know about the duplicate numberplate scam and paid the dealership to get the registration done. The dealership or the RTO officials used the documents of the old car to issue the same number plate. The XUV500 registered earlier also gets the same colour, which makes it difficult to trace such malpractices. Generally, regular traffic pickets do not check the chassis number and the Vehicle Identification Number, which can reveal such details about the car.
To avoid such frauds in the future, one should always duly check the registration certificate and carefully match the VIN and the chassis number to the vehicle’s physical number. Such fake numberplate on vehicles can also affect the insurance and in case of a claim, the insurer can deny honouring the claim.
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