The police have resumed efforts to dispose of unclaimed vehicles dumped on the compound of various stations as part of converting the underutilised space for other productive and beautification projects. Leaving the conventional procedures, the department has now decided to go for e-auction with the support of Metal Scrap Trading Corporation (MSTC), a public sector undertaking under the control of the Ministry of Steel.
The Mavoor police station will be the main beneficiary of the procedure in the first phase as around 50 such rusty vehicles will be cleared immediately from the station premises with the MSTC’s support. A Tamil Nadu-based company has won the auction and they will soon move the junk to their yard. Details of unclaimed vehicles in various other city stations too will be handed over to MSTC for support.
The police say it is the second time that they are going for large-scale clearing of unclaimed vehicles. Only vehicles that are free from court proceedings and unclaimed by the RC owner will be disposed of after public notice. The e-auction is open for all through the MSTC portal.
Police sources say the e-auction has earned the department around ₹25 lakh. Since most of the vehicles are mechanically unfit and impossible to repair at economical cost, the buyers are considering it as metal scrap with less value. For police stations, the main advantage is to free up the space from piled up junk that have been creating a huge mess, eating into the limited compound space.
A senior Civil Police Officer from Mavoor station says majority of the seized vehicles were involved in illegal sand smuggling and there were only very few owners who came forward to claim the vehicles. “In the next phase, we would be able to auction around 40 loads of sand unloaded from the seized vehicles and credit the amount to the government exchequer,” he adds.
Last year, there were several rounds of public auctioning conducted by the Police, Revenue and Motor Vehicles departments to clear the unclaimed vehicles that occupied huge space in various locations. The Motor Vehicles Department alone auctioned not less than 40 vehicles. Nearly 50 such worn-out vehicles from the civil station compound were cleared by the Revenue Department to provide better parking space for visitors.
