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| Selling vanity numbers: Punjab lessons for J&K | | | SANT KUMAR SHARMA
JAMMU, Oct 1: The transport department of the Punjab government earns lakhs of rupees by allotting registration numbers to the desirous as per their demand.
The first number in any series, 0001, fetches the department a handsome amount of Rs 50,000. The next eight numbers, from 0002 to 0009, fetch them Rs 10,000 each. The numbers from 0010 to 0100 each make the department richer by Rs 3,000.
There are no less than 70 registration authorities in Punjab who administer registration series like PB-01 to PB-70. While PB-01 is a series administered by State Transport Authority in Chandigarh, the series PB-70 is for residents of Dera Bassi.
This is in addition to the regular registration certificate (RC) fees that is charged for different categories of vehicles.
Not only this, the transport department also sells dozens of numbers as fancy numbers and charges additional fee on them.
The numbers like 0111, 0222, or for that matter 1111, 2222 and 0200, 0300 etc are also made available to customers if they pay an additional Rs 1,000. Numbers like 1010, 2020 or 5151, 6262 and a whole lot of others are available to the regular customers at an additional cost of Rs 1,000.
Overall, a series comprises registration numbers from 0001 to 9999 because the numbers are four-digit combinations. Once a particular series has run its course up to the largest four digit number i.e. 9999, the next series starts.
This means there are 9999 numbers in any series and the transport department of Punjab charges additional fee for at least around 200 of these numbers.
In some cities, even open auctions are held for allotting specific fancy numbers to the desirous and the bid can go into lakhs of rupees, according to sources in the Punjab transport department.
The details of fancy numbers, and their respective additional charges, are available under the icon registration on the official website of the Punjab transport department www.punjabtransport.nic.in
This is in sharp contrast to the practice in vogue in most transport authority offices in Jammu and Kashmir. There are no auctions of fancy numbers nor does the government charge any premium from the customers.
Incidentally, there are 14 transport authorities, the authorities in the capital cities of Srinagar and Jammu designated as Regional Transport Officers (RTOs) and others as Assistant Regional Transport Officers (ARTOs).
These officers administer registration series from JK-01 to JK-14. The series JK-01 is administered by RTO of Srinagar and JK-02 by the RTO Jammu.
Till date, however, there is no systematic method of auctioning fancy numbers in J&K. In some RTO and ARTO offices, the customers are sometimes asked to pay for fancy numbers. This additional fee may range from Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000 for numbers like 1010, 2020 or 9090.
The number most coveted by many customers, 0786, however, is allotted to influential people, without any premium being charged, according to sources in the two RTO offices at Jammu and Srinagar.
The number that has fetched the highest premium to the RTO in Jammu, which registers the maximum number of vehicles in the state, was JK02-AK-0047. Why? Because AK-47 has perhaps become one of the best known name or number in J&K after militancy broke out over two decades ago.
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