RTO investigates registration of new vehicles as ‘vintage’

Jaipur: Regional transport office (RTO)-Jaipur (II) has been given charge of investigating cases of registration numbers allotted to new vehicles from the "vintage" three-digit series of old vehicles, officials said Wednesday. Such cases of fraudulent registrations were reported in Salumber and Jhunjhunu districts, in the jurisdiction of RTO Jaipur (I), and therefore, to maintain transparency in the investigation process, the charge has been given to RTO-Jaipur (II).
Officials stated that records of all districts are now being checked to find such discrepancies, and action will be taken accordingly. In Jhunjhunu and Salumber districts, over 650 vintage vehicle numbers were allotted to new vehicles with backdated applications. The issue came to light during an audit this month, after which all such vintage numbers across the state were blocked to prevent further misuse.
"In Jhunjhunu and Salumber districts, a high number of such fraudulent registrations has been reported, due to which we have blocked all such vintage numbers from our system, so that they cannot be allotted even through backdated measures," said Shuchi Tyagi, commissioner of transport department.
Officials added that vehicles registered between Jan and March this year in these two districts are being thoroughly checked. Officials said the three-digit vintage numbers can only be retained by the owner or transferred to another person with the sale of a vehicle and re-registration of the same. These numbers cannot be bought like other special series vehicle numbers. Tyagi said the department has so far not received any application from original owners of vehicles to retain the numbers for their own new vehicles.
On April 1, after the discovery of fraudulent registration of vintage vehicle numbers on new vehicles, Jaipur RTO lodged an FIR and disciplinary action was taken against two officials.