Most RTOs don’t book cars with Marathi number plates

The Central Motor Vehicles Act, 1989, bans number plates that are only in Marathi or Devanagari script. However, the number of cases registered against vehicles with such number plates across the state is minimal.

In fact, of the 45 Regional Transport Offices (RTOs), only three have registered cases against such vehicles. In the others, not a single case has been registered over the last three years.

Activist Chetan Kothari got this information through an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Interestingly, of the 45 RTOs, only 30 provided the information sought by the application.

In the state, only the Wadala, Pune, and Pimpari-Chinchwad RTOs have taken action against number plates in Devanagari script.
In the city, of the three RTOs, only the Wadala office has registered a few cases - 18 - over the last three years. Eight of the cases resulted in convictions. The other two offices in Andheri and Tardeo have not registered a single case between 2006 and 2008, according to information furnished by them in response to the RTI application.

According to RTO officials, many small towns in the state have a large number of vehicles with Marathi number plates, but there has not been a single case registered by the RTOs concerned. “In most cases, political leaders and workers are the offenders. Hence, no action is taken against them for obvious reasons. If a case is filed, it become unnecessarily political. Also, most officials do not consider this to be that big an offence,” an RTO official said not wanting to be named.

The issue had come up in the legislative assembly a couple of times and the government had said that it wished to suggest modifications in the Central Motor Vehicle Act 1989 to make Marathi number plates legal.