Notice to Centre on vehicle registration plates

The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Centre on a petition seeking implementation of the scheme for high-security registration plates for motor vehicles.

The scheme to change over to the new number plates was being extended repeatedly since 2001 and even now it is hanging fire.

Though the Supreme Court had upheld the strict conditions for the tenders called by some states, no state has to this day implemented the scheme.

Some of them had since withdrawn the tenders and had done nothing in this direction, the petition said.

The petition was moved by M S Bitta. Bitta's main grievance, submitted before a bench headed by Justice Y K Sabharwal, was that the inactivity of the states governments in enforcing the rule has resulted in increased militant activities like bomb blasts, rapes and dacoity.

The government introduced the new number plate scheme in 2001 by amending the motor vehicles rules.

According to Rule 50, registration plates should conform to ISO 7591 standards or DIN 1745 of DIN 1783 standards. Plates should carry holograms and should be suitable for hotstamping. It should not lose its attributes for five years.

There are many other characteristics to make counterfeiting impossible. These plates can be made by private vendors and one need not go to the road transport authorities.

In November last year, the Supreme Court had dismissed a batch of petitions by the registration plates manufacturers challenging the tough conditions of tender for producing tamper-proof plates for motor vehicles. It asked the government to enforce the new plates within two years.

That judgment was delivered by a three-judge bench headed by Justice Sabharwal in petitions transferred from different high courts.

Those courts have been passing different interim orders while hearing the petitions of manufacturers. Therefore, all of them were transferred to the Supreme Court for a uniform decision.