The Delhi Traffic Police on Monday informed the Delhi High Court that they had put off taking action against owners of new non-commercial and commercial vehicles who have not got affixed the high-security number plates in their vehicles for three days to facilitate them to do the same.
The traffic police had announced that they would be launching a drive against defaulters from October 1.
They are enforcing the provision for affixing high security number plates in new as well as in-use vehicles on a Supreme Court direction asking all States and Union Territories to direct vehicles’ owners to go for this particular kind of number plates to ensure security and uniformity.
Experts say that besides making easy detection of stolen vehicles, the affixation of these number plates would eliminate completely use of fancy letters, unnecessary wordings and use of various sizes of number plates affecting visibility.
The traffic police gave this assurance to a Division Bench of the Court comprising Justice Darmar Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw in response to a petition by a woman lawyer who had sought a restraint order against the police from taking action against her.
Advocate Shweta Kapoor submitted that she had bought a new vehicle on September 6 with the assurance by the dealer that she would get a call for high security number plates from a designated affixation centre but she had not got any such call as yet.
She urged the Court to restrain the police from taking action against her as the blame lay at the doors of the Delhi Government or the dealer or the police.
In reply to her grievances, Najmi Waziri appearing for the police submitted that the petitioner’s car dealer had issued her a slip for getting the number plates affixed on September 6, and she could get it done within a week. Therefore, there was no impending action against her as she had the time till October 5 to have it done.
Mr. Waziri further submitted that the delay in making number plates available in time to the vehicles buyers was due to late forwarding of the necessary papers to the designated affixation centres and handing over of the slips having the names of the centres to the owners.
The matter will next come up for hearing on October 11.
