vehicles will have high-tech number plates

The registration number plate of your car will soon have RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology, which will make it easier for the RTO and traffic police to get details about you and your car even from 300 ft away.

Transport ministerRadhakrishna Vikhe-Patil . that tenders are being floated to procure the technology for embedding chips on number plates across Mumbai. The micro-chip will store data of the car owner, including registration details, chassis number and RTO details. It can be scanned using chip-readers from a distance of upto 300 ft.

Vikhe-Patil said, "It is high time we installed RFID chips on number plates. It will enable traffic cops to use the information on the plate to quickly pick up vehicles which are on the road illegally. It will also help in getting details of cars which are speeding, breaking traffic rules, and violating pollution control norms.'' He added that the high-tech number plates can be used in near future for automatic toll collections-a system wherein the toll amount can be debited from the car/truck owners' account the moment his vehicle passes a checkpost.

State transport commissioner Dilip Jadhav said that the Central, Wadala and Andheri RTOs were computerising all records of car registrations in Mumbai. "The transport minister is keen on introducing high security number plates. We will provide the necessary information to the company who will make the chips. It will really help us track down illegal vehicles,'' he said. The RTO had recently confiscated as many as 400 illegal taxis which will be destroyed using gas-cutters. "The illegal autos are next on our radar,'' Jadhav stated. The RTO has, in the past ten years, destroyed 6,000 illegal autos using gas cutters. It plans to `eliminate' at least a thousand autos from Mumbai roads in the next fortnight. The raids will be conducted under the supervision of regional tranport officers Vikas Pandkar and A N Bhalchandra.

Commenting on the proposed RFID number plates, an RTO official said, "If anyone tries to steal the number plate, it breaks. The purpose is to make it difficult for criminals to commit offences using false number plates.'' The new plates could be five to ten times the cost of ordinary number plates, but will ensure proper vigilance and security of vehicles in Mumbai, the official said.