Meghalaya Autos Seat 50, Cars Have 1,000-Yr Fitness

By Rahul Karmakar

Guwahati, Apr 15 : In Meghalaya, you can register a car 40 years before you buy it. You can also get a fitness certificate that makes it roadworthy for over 1,000 years. But, chances are, the car may share its engine and chassis numbers with 500 others.

There’s more. The car you have pre-registered can seat 11 persons. But, in contrast, a bus can seat only eight and an auto-rickshaw or a tempo, 50 people each.

If you think this is ridiculous, check out the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on Meghalaya’s transport department after the implementation of “Vahan” since April 1, 2002.

The database prepared with the software had riveting nuggets, found the CAG, which examined records upto March 31, 2011.

Section 56 of the Motor Vehicles Act does not deem a vehicle registered unless it carries a fitness certificate.

But here, 202 vehicles were found to be roadworthy for far longer than the universally accepted 15 years. “In seven cases, it was 91 to 1,016 years from the date of registration,” the report said. Others — 6,881 of the 77,761 vehicles registered — lacked fitness information.

Of the 41,901 transport vehicles, the fitness certificate of 23,379 had expired, the CAG said. There was no information on renewal.

Analysing data from seven district transport offices, the CAG said 1,277 vehicles shared the same engine number, and 1,218 vehicles shared 654 chassis numbers.