Odisha govt to auction fancy numbers for vehicles

BHUBANESWAR: Want to take a fancy number for your vehicle, then you have to participate in the auction process to get your desired number.

You heard it right.  The Odisha government has decided to auction fancy numbers online from January 7.

Transport Minister Ramesh Majhi on Saturday said auctioning of fancy number plates would start from January 7.

Earlier, the Commerce and Transport Department had issued a draft notification seeking changes to the Section 14 of the Motor Vehicle Rule – 1914.

The state government hopes to generate more revenue through the auction of fancy number plates and bring transparency into allotment procedure of fancy vehicle registration numbers.

The transport commissioner will reserve the fancy registration number and notify the number in the local paper for auction. The department has identified 423 numbers between 1 and 9999 categories as ‘fancy numbers’.

Sources said the fancy numbers would be auctioned under four categories.

The minimum bid price for a two wheel fancy number will be Rs 10,000 and for a four wheeler, it will be Rs 20,000. The minimum bidding price for a very special number like 1-9 (single digit) will be Rs 1 lakh, while double-digit numbers and series numbers would be Rs 60,000 and other fancy numbers will be sold at Rs 40,000.