Mumbai citizens can retain old car number

Abandoning your old vehicle to upgrade to a swankier one? Don’t worry about having to part with the old number. You can now retain your earlier car’s number, for a price of course.

“The new scheme will help citizens retain their old number plates. The scheme has begun at certain places and will be in full force by new year,” transport commissioner Dilip Jadhav said.

The only catch is that citizens would have to deposit a fee, an amount similar to what they had spent while procuring the number. One can then retain a particular number for their car for the lifetime.

Transport officials said citizens spend a lot of money and time to procure a particular number, which may be their favourite. RTO officials said attractive numbers include multiples of eight, or simply a repeat of a digit like 1111, 5555 and even 786.

According to the latest statistics, for 2008-09, there were 42,629 cases of citizens getting attractive numbers at a cost of over Rs25 crore. “When they upgraded their cars, they had to lose those numbers,” an official said.

There are various fee slabs ranging from several thousands to lakhs depending on the part of the number and type of the vehicle (two-wheeler or four-wheeler).