In the last four days the City Traffic Police personnel had imposed a fine of Rs. 100 each on close to 1,500 vehicle owners for using unauthorised number plates. Of this, about 650 of them were found using number plates with the letters IND and a hologram sticker.
Four-wheeler users were the most affected by this drive. They were booked under section 50 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules read with 177 of the Motor vehicle Act.
A traffic police official said that in 2001 the Union Government took efforts to make it mandatory for vehicles to have tamper-proof High-Security Registration Plates (HSRP). These plates will have a hologram and the letters IND printed on it. Though the implementation was left to the State Governments, it was not authorised in Tamil Nadu and a few other States.
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Meanwhile, a public interest litigation was filed in the Madras High Court in November 2014 saying that plate-makers were supplying look-alikes of HSRPs.
The police official said that the court found discrepancy in the statistics provided by the State Government regarding the cases registered against vehicle owners using such number plates. Following this, the city police started registering cases from January 23. Vehicle owners, who paid the fine, said that they were unaware of any such direction from the government and felt that the transport department should have given them time to remove the stickers from their number plates, than directly jumping into action. The police sources said that they have been instructed to identify persons or units manufacturing such number plates.
Secretary of Coimbatore Consumer Cause K. Kathirmathiyon felt that it was not necessary to penalise vehicle users, as HSRPs were not implemented in the State. “Nobody sold it as HSRP. People bought it as they saw it as a different type of number plate. This cannot be called a violation,” he said.
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