The Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) has unearthed an inter-State racket involved in large-scale evasion of motor vehicle tax using fake residential addresses, life insurance policy certificates, and notarised affidavits.
As the State exchequer continues to lose crores of rupees annually as luxury cars plying in the State are registered in Puducherry using fake residential addresses to evade tax, the MVD stumbled upon the racket that poses a threat even to national security.
A four-member team led by Assistant Secretary, State Transport Authority, C.S. Santosh Kumar, who is in Puducherry with a list of 2,000 vehicles to verify the addresses, has found that they had been registered using life insurance policy certificates, notorised affidavits, and fake addresses.
“The insurance firms and notaries do not go for verification of the address. We have found that even luxury cars bought in Kerala are taken for registration in Puducherry after securing life insurance policy certificates or notorised affidavits with fake address. This also poses a threat to national security,” Joint Transport Commissioner and Secretary, STA, Rajeev Puthalath, said.
Physical verification
The team comprising Joint Regional Transport Officer Biju James and Motor Vehicle Inspectors Vinod Kumar and George John are collecting documents and are carrying out physical verification of addresses. “This will take two more days,” Mr. Santosh Kumar told The Hindu on Tuesday. Up to five cars were found registered using the same fake address. There are touts and agents who do registration job at Puducherry for high-end vehicles for a fee, sources said.
Help sought
State Transport Commissioner Anil Kant had written to Puducherry Transport Commissioner S.D. Sundareshan seeking his help to collect information on these vehicles and steps to put an end to registering vehicles using fake address. The MVD will hand over the addresses and details collected to the Kerala Police to register criminal cases as it involved forgery, the Joint Transport Commissioner said. The MVD has also decided to levy the tax from the date of registration from these motorists and to inform MoRTH to plug loopholes in the Central Motor Vehicle Rule Act.
