In a major pro-people initiative, the Punjab government has introduced a user-friendly e-auction policy in the Transport Department for reserved numbers — also known as fancy numbers — exempting the general public from visiting the registering authority office while facilitating their participation in the process from the comfort of their homes.

“This is the Punjab Government’s path breaking initiative to facilitate people. The e-auction of reserved numbers would be done through VAHAN 4.0 web application, which is designed and developed by NIC under the Union Ministry of Roads, Transports and Highway’s supervision,” said the state Transport Minister Razia Sultana on Thursday.

She said that the Department has introduced this new user-friendly e-auction process to make all reserved numbers available to the public 24X7 across the entire week. The registration for participation in e-auction would be open on every Sunday for three days — that is Sunday to Tuesday.

The Minister said that after the start of e-auction, bidding for the numbers would take place for the subsequent two days — Wed and Thursday. “The payment period for the successful bidder would be two days — that is till Saturday midnight on the online e-auction platform. The facility would be available on Gazetted holidays also,” she said.

Sultana said that there would be a non-refundable registration fee of Rs 1,000 for each reserved number to participate in e-auction and to further ensure transparency of bidding process, the results of successful as well as unsuccessful bidders would be uploaded on the VAHAN website and successful bidder would be informed through SMS and email.                

The Minister said that the successful bidder would be required to deposit a bid amount within three days from date of closure of bid, otherwise the number would stand cancelled and would be available for next e-auction.

She said that earlier a person was required to deposit 50 percent of reserve price which acted as a deterrent to public to participate as refund for unsuccessful bidder was an issue.

Sultana said that a successful bidder was required to get his reserved number assigned to the vehicle within 15 days from the date of issue of allotment letter, otherwise it would stand cancelled and available for further e auction.

The Minister also said that this policy would allow all reserved numbers left un-auctioned in past, available for e-auction and give opportunity to more applicants to get reserved numbers adding that now reserved numbers of active series would be available for bidding in e-Auction throughout the year.

She said that the detailed notification of the process is available on www.punjabtransport.org. Citing the benefits of the new policy, Sultana said that this transparent policy would give more choice to people and was affordable as only Rs 1,000 required was to participate as compared to 50 percent of reserve amount in the previous system.