Supreme Court's Aadhaar verdict may delay new vehicle registrations

With the Supreme Court barring private companies from seeking Aadhaar details from consumers, registration of new vehicles may get impacted. The authority to give registration number to a vehicle rests with regional transport offices (RTOs), which are controlled by the state governments.

The registration is done by Deemed District Transport Office (DTO) on behalf of the government. These DTOs are run by private dealers. Aadhaar, though not mandatory to buy vehicles, is used by the DTOs for registration of vehicles.

"Dealers do not use the Aadhaar card details for themselves and is purely used they are asked to. In cases where Aadhaar is not available, a passport can be used (for consumer details),” said a dealer selling Hero Motocorp models.

The Supreme Court’s decision today, however, has left the dealer community confused. With today’s ruling, consumers could refrain from submitting Aadhaar details to the dealer.

“We are running deemed DTOs where the government function of registration is done by us. We have to do temporary registration too. We are not sure if we will still be allowed to ask for Aadhaar details of a consumer after the Supreme Court verdict,” said a Mahindra & Mahindra dealer.

The Road Transport and Safety Bill, which is still not yet passed by the government, has a provision allowing vehicle registration to be done by the dealer. All the paperwork, issuance of number plate and the process of registration will be done by the dealer. RTOs will however, continue to issue the registration number through online payment of tax.

As the process would be in the hands of the private players, RTOs had opposed the government’s move. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari had alleged that the issue of paying bribes at RTOs was a major concern with the government and the bill looked to abolish that system.