It is not just the 20-Point Programme vice-chairman of latehar, who was sent to jail on December 16 after he thrashed District Transportation Officer (DTO) of the district for removing scribbled number plate from his vehicle, but a huge number of vehicle owners including small to big people’s representatives use designer name plates on their vehicles fearlessly violating the Motor Vehicle’s Act provisions.
Regardless of several attempts made in the past, the number of such vehicles that have scribbled number and name plates embedded on them has considerably increased. Regular checking drives, awareness programmes and above all having special penal provisions have all proved futile by far in creating awareness regarding this among the public.
On being asked about the prime reason behind such open violation of the Central Motor Vehicle Act and why so far the traffic police have been unsuccessful in checking this, SP (Traffic), Sanjay Ranjan Singh termed the mental state of an individual as the main cause for such kind of deliberate violation.
“People’s mentally to flaunt their status is the only reason for such kind of intentional law contravention. Also, at times lack of proper mechanisms like human resource crunch including machines create hindrance in cracking the whip on the defaulters,” Singh said.
Taking cue from the recent incident that occurred in latehar, the traffic SP said that the list of regular defaulters will be prepared soon. Also, he added that the attempts are being taken to maintain a database as after the introduction of e-challan system, every individual is on the traffic police radar. When questioned about any serious attempt taken thus far to teach lessons to violators, DTO Ranchi, Nagendra Paswan said that earlier they had also tried to sensitize all those designers/painters who designs number plates through workshops and seminars, however, all endeavors had proved vain. Citing, the rules of Central Motor Vehicles Act that clearly defines the penalty for violating number plate norms, DTO Ranchi said, “Sub-clause (E) of section 50 and 51 of Central Motor Vehicle Act clearly states the size of number plates, font style and size etc. However, despite these regulations, a major chunk of the population selects designer number plate which is a serious violation of the set guidelines.”
Stating about the steps presently being taken to nab the defaulters for infringing the number plates norms, Paswan said, “We are conducting regular checking drives. We have to abide by the rules as defined; we cannot go beyond the set parameters. However, efforts are being put to instill the regulation as mentioned among the people.” The Central Motor Vehicle Act does not permit any design on number plates to indicate that a vehicle belongs to the government or any person holding a high designation. Earlier through several communiqué, the central transport authority had made all provisions clear mentioned under the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 (provision of rule-50, sub-rule-2 and proviso-D). Also, the Central Motor Vehicle rules suggest that letters on vehicle number plate should be in English and numerals in Arabic.