On February 12, Subhash Desai, minister for Marathi language said no action will be taken against vehicles for having number plates in Marathi.
Meanwhile, FPJ has found that constant crackdowns on the traffic violators with fancy number plates have resulted in a steep decline in the number of cases recorded across the state — from an alarming 94,466 cases in 2018 to a mere 6,301 last year.
Vijay Patil, superintendent of Highway State Police (Maharashtra) said that the decline can be attributed to the new rule set by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), which made it mandatory for all vehicles to be pre-fitted with High Security Registration Plates (HSRP) and asked the vehicle owners to get their fancy number plates fixed.
Data accessed by The Free Press Journal states that after strict action was called against those violating the crucial number plate rules, violations dipped shockingly. The data revealed that before the rule was brought in place by MoRTH, 94,446 violators in the state were found with fancy number plates in 2018, who shed out over Rs 1.77 crore in fines. Having played by the rules subsequently, only 6,301 cases were recorded last year, which caused a fine of Rs 12.60 lakh.
“While a little over 36 per cent of violators paid, challans worth Rs 4.62 lakh were recovered last year, while rest of the challans worth Rs 7.98 lakh is yet to be paid. Even as the violators changed the number plates after being caught, they think the challan will be reversed and everything will be done-and-dusted,” said a senior state traffic officer, who did not wish to be named.
Interestingly, last week, Subhash Desai, minister for Marathi language in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government had said that no action would be initiated against vehicles that have their number plates in Marathi.
This comes as a contradiction to the Central Motor Vehicles Rule, which states that the use of number plates in Devanagri script is illegal.
According to the data available with the Mumbai Traffic Police (MTP), the use of fancy and irregular number plates in the city continues to be rampant with traffic police booking 2,272 cases of violations from January to August last year, while the remaining data is yet to be collated.
A traffic official said, “Motorists with fancy number plates which included graffiti or drawing, along with numbers written in letters, were making it difficult for the hi-tech CCTV cameras equipped with the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) feature to register offences and issue e-challans.”
Earlier last year, in a crackdown on violators with fancy number plates, the MTP had issued a circular to all number plate makers found violating Central Motor Vehicle (CMV) Rules, 1989, stating that a legal action will be initiated against them. Moreover, police had also sent reminder messages with the help of e-challan system to switch back to standard number plate.
Months after banning the use of fancy number plates in the state, police had also asked the Regional Transport Offices (RTO) to suspend the driving licences of those motorists who were caught with fancy numberplates on their vehicles despite sending reminders. Accordingly, the RTOs across Maharashtra had suspended over 207 driving licences.
A traffic policeman said, two-wheeler and four-wheeler vehicles which are used in crime incidents like kidnapping, murder and chain/mobile phone snatching, mostly have a common factor that the vehicle is fitted with a fancy number plate to throw police off their trail.
Guidelines for standard number plates
* Vehicles having less than 70cc engine should display a vehicle number plate with a font height of 15mm and width of 2.5mm.
* Vehicles with 500cc vehicles or three-wheelers, the font height should be 35mm and width should be 7mm.
* For vehicles which do not fall into this category, the font height of number plates (both front and rear) should be 65mm with the width of 10mm.
