Revised fee dampens fancy for numbers

The demand for fancy registration numbers for vehicles has gone down by 50% after the state government’s decision to increase the fee for the same.

The government decided to hike the fee after witnessing the huge demand for these numbers from both transport and non-transport vehicles.

With the increased fee, the government was expecting to enhance its revenue. Transport vehicles are those ferrying public, while non-transport vehicles are for personal use.

“Last year we had collected Rs40,44,000 by giving away fancy numbers to 95 vehicles between February and August. This year, after the revision of the rates, we have mobilised only Rs22,40,000 revenue from February to August. In our office alone, we have seen a 40% drop in the revenue collection under this head,” said KT Halaswamy, regional transport officer, Koramangala division.

Jnanabharathi regional transport officer Syed Shafi Ahmed said after the revision of rates, only 25 vehicles got fancy numbers in his office. “The revenue has dipped by 50% in my office,” said Ahmed.

During February-August last year, the Jnanabharathi office had sanctioned fancy numbers to 100 vehicles. Another regional transport officer, J Ganendra Kumar, said, “After the revision, we have received a revenue of about Rs19.5 lakh for fancy numbers in the last sixth months. Compared to the previous year, the revenue has dropped by 40%. Not even a single transport vehicle has been registered with fancy number after the revision,” he said.

Joint commissioner of transport RV D’Souza told DNA that the increase in the fee was necessitated by increase in the number of applicants for the fancy numbers. Giving away these numbers involved a lot of work, he said. “There has been a drop of about 40%to 50% in the number of applications after the revision,” he said.