Fancy number fetches ₹45.99 lakh in Ernakulam RTO auction
The Hindu
Luxury car owner pays ₹45.99 lakh for fancy number KL-07 DG 0007 in Kerala's highest bid.
How much will a vehicle owner be prepared to cough up for a mere registration number? As it turned out, a private company bought the fancy number KL-07 DG 0007 for its luxury premium car, a Lamborghini Urus costing over ₹4 crore, registered at the Ernakulam Regional Transport office, for a whopping ₹45.99 lakh after a keenly contested online bidding. Arguably, this is the highest price a notified fancy number has ever fetched in Kerala, with the previous high reportedly being ₹31 lakh.
The notified fancy number 0007 entails an initial booking price of ₹25,000. Five individuals had booked the number, triggering an auction on the Parivahan website of the Motor Vehicles department on Monday morning (April 7). The bidding involves a minimum increment of ₹1,000 at a time, with no maximum cap.
As the bidding intensified and prices soared, three participants dropped out, leaving two in the fray. The bidding ended when a bid of ₹44.84 lakh was topped by the eventual winner at ₹45.99 lakh. The number will be assigned only upon full payment of the bid amount. So far, only the mandatory booking amount of ₹25,000 has been paid, MVD sources said.
Another notified fancy number, KL-07 DG 0001, which carries the highest base booking price of ₹1 lakh, was sold for ₹25.52 lakh following a similar online auction. The car belonged to a person in Piravom.
Anyone opting for a fancy number can pay the base price and register through the Parivahan website between Monday and Saturday at 4:30 p.m. This is followed by an online auction, which continues till Monday around 10:30 a.m. If no bid is received within 10 minutes after that time, the number is allocated.
The government has notified six categories of fancy numbers with base prices ranging from ₹3,000 to ₹1 lakh. One (1) remains the most fancied number with a base price tag of ₹1 lakh. A batch of eight numbers carries a base price of ₹50,000, followed by another batch of 16 numbers with a price tag of ₹25,000. There are 29 other fancy numbers with a price tag of ₹10,000 and 66 other numbers with a base price tag of ₹5,000. Any number other than these entails a base price of ₹3,000.
The Ernakulam Regional Transport Office (RTO) contributed ₹11.84 crore to the State exchequer through the auctioning of fancy numbers during the five-year period between 2017 and 2022, according to a 2023 RTI reply.
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