The Mumbai Traffic Police launched another crackdown on fancy number plates from Wednesday, wherein those with such number plates were issued fines. Moreover, for maximum participation of the police, there will be a competition between traffic beat chowkies to catch the maximum number of violators. Last month, police had launched a crackdown on black films.
A senior police official said that during a CCTV camera inspection, it was observed that a number of vehicles had fancy number plates on them despite several reminders from traffic police and notifications from the government. In a bid to bring down the fancy number plate violations, police kickstarted the crackdown on such irregular number plates on Wednesday.
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."
Police said that until November 30, over 1,407 vehicles with fancy number plates were fined by the Mumbai Traffic Police, which was more than double recorded last year. Policemen from all chowkies have a healthy competition among themselves to fine the maximum violators and upload their photos on the MTP mobile application in a bid to collect fines.
A traffic policeman also 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 Plate
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 the width should be 7mm.
For vehicles that do not fall into this category, the font height of number plates (both front and rear) should be 65mm with a width of 10mm.
