Special fee mandatory for vanity vehicle number bids

Shimla, July 3

To check non-serious bidders during the auction of VIP numbers for vehicles, especially from one to 10, the state government has amended the rules, making it mandatory to deposit a special registration fee of up to Rs 5 lakh before the auction.

The State Transport department today issued a notification making an amendment to Rule 69-B of the Himachal Pradesh Motor Vehicles Rules, 1999. As per the Himachal Pradesh Motor Vehicles (Second Amendment) Rules, 2023, a person seeking number 0001 will have to pay a sum of Rs 5 lakh before taking part in the auction for VIP numbers.

The amendment comes in the wake of a bid by two non-serious individuals, who quoted more than Rs 1 crore for VIP number for their scooters, only to back out when they were asked to deposit the amount. Following this, Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri, who also holds the Transport portfolio, ordered the registration of an FIR against those individuals and a subsequent amendment to the rules followed.

As per the notification one to 10 number of the HP-07 series will be reserved for the General Administration Department (GAD) to be allotted for government vehicle without the payment of this amount. The registration fee fixed for getting 0001 number in all series, except HP-07, has been fixed at Rs 5 lakh and Rs 75,000 for numbers from 0002 to 0010.

For all numbers between 0011 and 0100, the special registration fee has been fixed at Rs 50,000. The fee fixed for some other numbers like 9999, 7777, 1000, 2000, 5000 and 4444 has been fixed at Rs 15,000. A fee of Rs 10,000 has been fixed for preferential numbers like 1234, 2626, 3131 and such other numbers.

The registering authority shall charge this special registration fee (SRF) for the allotment of a special registration mark (number) for a motor vehicle in addition to the prescribed fee under Rule 81 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989.

As per the rules, the owner of a vehicle can retain the special number on his new vehicle in case of sale or scrapping of the old vehicle.