70% of 41 crore vehicles fail to meet statutory compliances

NEW DELHI: Over 70% of 40.7 crore vehicles, mostly two-wheelers, in the country do not comply with some or other norm, such as those related to pollution under control (PUC) certificate, fitness certificate or insurance, according to road transport ministry data.

The data, shared with states and UTs in a meeting last week, showed over two-thirds of these non-compliant vehicles - approximately 23.5 crore - are two-wheelers.

Flagging this to states, the ministry has proposed a framework to ensure vehicle owners adhere to statutory compliances within a given period - else, gradually, non-compliant vehicles will be automatically de-registered. Officials said since a large number of vehicles in the Vahan database are legally or operationally not fit to ply, the overall count remains inflated.

"Govt wants to clean the database. States have been urged to give feedback and also plan for sanitisation of the database," said an official. As per details, a little over 8.2 crore vehicles are active and fully compliant while over 30 crore have some compliance gaps. Another 2.2 crore are archived.

The vehicles have been put in four categories - active-compliant (all valid), active non-compliant (some invalid), temporary archived (prolonged or repeated non-compliance) and permanent archived (scrapped, registration certificate cancelled, deregistered or surrendered).

Among big states, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar have over 40% registered vehicles that are active but non-compliant. Telangana is the only state where their share is less than 20%. In the temporary archived vehicles category, Rajasthan, Odisha, Bihar, MP and Karnataka have more than 40%.

According to the proposed framework, owners of active non-compliant vehicles would have to renew fitness, PUC certificate and insurance within a year. If they fail to do so, they would be put in the temporary archive category. Failing renewal of fitness, insurance and PUC certificate within two years would result in such vehicles falling in the permanent archive segment.

Officials said this reclassification will happen automatically based on renewal of compliance checks. Permanent archive is final by default. Recovery is allowed in exceptional cases such as data errors, court orders or issue relating to migration legacy data. The transport commissioner's approval would be mandatory for this. All recoveries will be digitally logged, auditable and reported to ensure transparency," said an official.
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