Government Plans to Introduce IN Registration Series to Ease Interstate Registration

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) has come forward with a proposal for a new rule, which would help introduce new registration series for vehicles. The new IN series would be a pilot program and it aims for more ease and convenience, while transfer of registrations of vehicles from one state to another due to relocation.

• As a pilot project, a new IN registration series would be introduced

• For those vehicles registered with IN series road tax would be levied for 2 years at a time.

• Owners of IN Series vehicles, need not register if they move or relocate another state

According to the drafted proposal, it has been stated that the new series would be available for all central as well as state government employees, defense personnel, central public sector undertaking (PSUs) as well as private sector companies which have offices in 5 or more union territories or states. The new registration policy aims to ease the processes under the Section 47 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 that requires people who have moved or relocated to another states to re-register their car to the state they have moved to, after 1 year they have moved there.

The present process is not only complicated but time consuming as well, the individual has to first require to get no-objection certificate(NOC) from the parent state to the new state, the application for refund of road tax can be filed with the parent state, but for that, you must first pay the road tax to the new state. To make the process of road tax simple, the new IN series would tax a vehicle for a period of only 2 years and moving forward it will be in multiples of two years.

With the new proposal, initial road tax which needs to be paid for the new car having IN series, at the time of the purchase, would be substantially lower when compared to cars with traditional state registration. This process would result in a reduction of the new car price. We find, usually road tax for a traditional state-based registration in India is calculated for the period of 15 years, in other words, the buyer would require to pay road tax for 2 years rather than 15 years during the time of purchase.

However, vehicle registration has been state prerogative; hence new registration seems to be a more centralized process. What has to be seen, as to whether the new centralized transport office would bypass the already existing state transport organizations. This new registration policy could also have an impact on GST with the split between both state as well as central government coming into question.