Lockdown: Drastic fall in vehicle registration in April

Migrants coming from Maharashtra board a truck to reach their native places in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, amid the ongoing COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, in Bhopal. Pic/ PTI

The registration of vehicles by Maharashtra RTOs saw a drastic fall in the last two months of the lockdown as only 27,278 vehicles were registered compared to over four lakh vehicles in the same period last year. This comes to less than seven per cent of the total vehicles registered in the same period last year. According to the vehicle registration data, total 27,278 new vehicles were registered in April and May this year at 50 Regional Transport Offices RTOs of Maharashtra. In the same period last year, 4,01,961 vehicles were registered in the state. The drop in vehicle registration and reduced tax collection due to COVID-19 outbreak also adversely affected the revenue collection of RTOs, an official in the motor vehicles department said.

In April and May, the revenue collection by RTOs was Rs 95.71 crore as against Rs 1,339.67 crore in the same period last year. Maharashtra has the highest vehicle population of over 3.75 crore and a revenue of over Rs 8,300 crore is collected annually in the form of taxes. A senior RTO official said most of the vehicles registered in the past two months were sold in March. The vehicles could not be immediately registered due to various issues like lockdown, delay in loan approval and incomplete paperwork. Hence, the registration was done in the last two months, he said. Also, most of these new vehicles were registered in April as compared to May as the Supreme Court earlier extended the deadline for registration of BS-IV vehicles by a month. In April, 21,535 new vehicles, including 17,545 two- wheelers, 1,317 four-wheelers light motor vehicles and other heavy vehicles, were registered. In May, the number fell further to 5,743, which included 3,045 two-wheelers, 2,597 four-wheelers and heavy vehicles, as per the data. Since March 22, RTO offices were functional with minimum staff, and most of the works, except vehicle registration, were stopped.

Among the total new vehicles registered in April and May, 24,649 were non-transport category vehicles like personal cars and two-wheelers, and 2,629 were transport or commercial vehicles like trucks and buses, as per the data. The maximum registrations in the two months were of two-wheelers 20,590, followed by cars 3,914. Among the 50 RTOs, the highest 1,792 new vehicles were registered in the last two months at the Pune RTO, where the registration number starts with -MH-12-, sources said. In Mumbai, four RTOs registered 2,822 vehicles or 6.28 per cent as against same period in 2019, including 2,062 two-wheelers and 276 four-wheelers, as compared to 44,939 vehicles in the same period last year. The highest number of 852 vehicles was registered at Tardeo RTO MH-01, followed by Wadala RTO MH-O3, Borivali RTO MH-47 and Andheri RTO MH-02 with 803, 591 and 576 vehicles, respectively. With the easing of lockdown now, the vehicle registration activity is expected to pick up gradually, a transport official said.

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