Hyderabad, September 09: To rake in the moolah and bring about more competition for fancy registration numbers, which is quite a craze among Hyderabadis, auction of numbers will be held once a week instead of daily, which is the existing practice.
As part of reforms, number auctioning will be made online and bidder will have the opportunity to continuously track what price other bidders have quoted for a specific number.
T hrough this system, the bidder need not visit the concerned Road Transport Office (RTO) and drop a sealed quotation and fees.
Transport officials say the bidder can regularly increase his price quotation, based on the what others have been quoting.
Officials in the Transport Department told Expresso that there has been tremendous demand for fancy numbers in the AP 9 series, as compared to other series in Hyderabad. Officials intend to cash in on the heavy demand for the AP 9 series, by making it a common code throughout the city.
Every year, the Transport Department earns a neat revenue of Rs 5 crore in the Twin Cities through the bidding system.
The department is now toying the idea of ‘one district, one code’ instead of multiple district codes. In the Twin Cities, the series AP 9, AP 10, AP 11, AP 12 and AP 13 are in use. Similar is the case with Ranga Reddy, Krishna which use multiple codes.
Presently, all vehicle owners, whose residence addresses come under the Khairatabad RTA, have been given the AP 9 series. As a result, only citizens of this region can bid for fancy numbers followed by AP 9. Once the ‘one district, one code’ is enforced in the city, vehicle owners from other areas can also participate in the bidding.
“We want to rationalise the fancy number bidding process. There has to be more competition and the system has to be user-friendly. The proposal will be put forward to the government,” Transport Commissioner J Raymond Peter told Expresso.
The department might also change the existing slabs followed for the fancy numbers. Presently, the fees prescribed for 1, 9, 999, 9999, which are the most sought after numbers, is Rs 50,000. Similarly, Rs 30,000, Rs 20,000 and Rs 10,000 are the slabs prescribed for other fancy numbers.
-Agencies