So, has the Puducherry-registered premium cars in the district suddenly vanished into thin air?
With the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) tightening the noose, such vehicles have made themselves scarce. Vehicles with PY registration, which were fairly common on roads in the district, have overnight become hard to trace, said MVD officials who are on the trail of such vehicles registered in Puducherry to avoid paying the higher tax prevalent in Kerala.
Officials have warned owners guilty of tax evasion not to stow away their expensive possessions in the hope that the drive will fizzle out sooner than later. In fact, from rummaging through the surveillance camera footage of the MVD and the police and database of finance and insurance companies, officials are leaving no stone unturned in detecting such vehicles and bringing crores of rupees their owners owe to the government exchequer.
“Since most of such premium vehicles are fitted with GPS and radio-frequency identification (RFID), we are also exploring the scope of tracing them taking advantage of those facilities, with the help of the cyber cell,” said an MVD official.
Meanwhile, several vehicle owners are taking voluntary corrective measures without waiting to be served notice, as the MVD has observed that nearly 50 such vehicles owners have secured No Objection Certificates (NOC) from Puducherry over the last couple of days so as to get registrations transferred to Kerala. Once they produce the NOC at the Regional Transport Office concerned, the vehicles will be examined and issued new registration numbers on paying the tax prevalent here.
Mulling limited period window
Even as the department is putting the heat on owners of such vehicles, the MVD top brass seems to be exploring the possibility of offering a limited period window to offenders to pay the required tax without entailing further legal proceedings. This is based on the impression that not all are wilful offenders but were either ignorant of the illegality involved in getting their vehicles registered for much a lower rate in Puducherry or were gullible enough to be misled by agents who are out to make a few bucks in the pretext of helping vehicle owners.
Some owners are also known to fall for the carrot dangled by some dealers in cahoots with agents by convincing the former how they can effectively buy a higher model vehicle at the price of a lower model by way of savings by registering their vehicles in Puducherry. The MVD has already traced over 200 Puducherry-registered vehicles in Ernakulam, while the credentials of another 700-odd vehicles remain to be verified.
