Only 14 of 256 fancy vehicle numbers sold in last online auction

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, February 18

The response to the online auction of the fancy vehicle numbers started by the Punjab Transport Department has been falling since it got started about three years ago.

In the last e-auction of numbers in the series PB-08-CU, only 14 of the 256 fancy numbers were sold. The response has been falling with the auction of numbers of each series. The first series to be sold in the online format was the CJ series which went right after the launch of the online bidding scheme in March 2014.

Nearly 65 vanity numbers were sold in the CJ series, 50 in the CK series and 55 numbers in the CL series in the e-auction. But the response came down in the subsequent CM and CN series, with just 23 numbers going for sale. The CP series had just about 19 online buyers and the response has been quite feeble since then.

In the 12 series which have been auctioned online so far, the 0001 number which has a reserve price of a whopping Rs 5 lakh has got sold only twice. “While other numbers get sold on reserve price on the first come-first serve basis, 0001 is yet to be allotted in at least 10 series. The problem is not with online auction. It is actually with the prices of some numbers that got jacked up by 10 times. The reserve price of 0001 number was Rs 50,000 before the e-auction got started. The bidding often remained very competitive, with buyers taking it up to Rs 4 lakh. If the government brings down the reserve price, the number will definitely get sold at a good amount out of sheer competition and the overall income of the department will increase,” a staff member from the DTO office suggested.

The employees said that the income of the department had not gone down as the reserve price was high and there were takers later. “Even the entry fee for participating in the bidding, which ranges from Rs 200 to Rs 2,000, has been fetching a good income,” said a dealing officer.