No more waiting for vehicle number in Kerala: MVD plans automatic registration

Thiruvananthapuram: Buying a new vehicle in Kerala may soon no longer mean waiting for registration. The Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) is set to modify the Vahan software to enable automatic registration once the registration fee and tax are paid.

Vehicles can be registered directly from showrooms. Along with paying the applicable fee and tax, the buyer will have to enter their Aadhaar number on the Vahan portal. The software will retrieve the owner's details from the Aadhaar database and automatically approve the registration.

The registration will be allotted to the MVD office having jurisdiction over the vehicle owner's address based on the post office code. Buyers will also be able to verify the vehicle's engine and chassis numbers.

However, vehicles for which fancy numbers are booked and those requiring body construction will continue to be registered manually through MVD offices.

For online applications, vehicle registrations are currently approved by Assistant Vehicle Inspectors. Registration has often been delayed due to their workload. There have also been complaints that some officials deliberately delayed registrations seeking bribes. The new system is intended to eliminate such delays and reduce the scope for malpractice.
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Once the fee and tax are paid, vehicles can be taken on the road. The only likely delay would be in fitting the high-security registration plate.

The practice of giving faster registration to applications submitted through intermediaries will also be eliminated.