NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has slammed automobile manufacturers for not furnishing details of High Security Registration Plates (HSRP) on its central vehicle registration database, VAHAN.
At a meeting earlier this month, the ministry sought explanations from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for not uploading the HSRP inventory on VAHAN. It is mandatory for vehicle manufacturers to provide HSRP in all new vehicles from April.
“Currently, dealers provide details of vehicles sold to HSRP supplier, who after embossing, provides the physical plates to them and provides information of the plates mainly through a web portal. A dealer after having fixed the new HSRP, has the HSRP number details manually fed on VAHAN where there is no IT-based system of tracking. This sometimes leads to incorrect entries in VAHAN,” the minutes of the meeting stated.
Introduced in 2005, HSRPs were made mandatory in 2012. But, doubts have been raised over its implementation. Experts say the move to make manufacturers responsible for its implementation can solve the problem.
“It was discussed and clarified that dealers can supply for their brand as the spirit of the amendment is that the manufacturer shall be responsible for security features of HSRP. When they supply to different brands, then control of security features is lost,” the statement said.
The SIAM cited difficulties in uploading data as car manufacturers gave the HSRP contract to manufacturers, who in turn were updating data manually.