DHARMAPURI: The Regional Transport Office in Dharmapuri has collected over Rs 3.56 crore in fines and tax arrears through random checks in the last ten months. A total of 37,500 vehicles were checked in the period and offences like failure to hold permits, pollution certificates, fitness or registration certificate and improper tax payments were found. For these offences over 724 vehicles have been seized by the motor vehicle inspector (MVI) in Dharmapuri. RTO staff has collected a total of Rs 1,83,97,136 as pending taxes and Rs 84,92,630 as the penalty for various other offences, said sources.
AK Dharanidhar, Motor Vehicle Inspector said, “The key focus of these checks is to identify tax defaulters of commercial tourist vehicles, Heavy duty trucks transporting goods and pick up trucks transporting goods between states. During the checks, we also looked into the Fitness Certificates, permits and other documents. Drivers failing to produce the required certificates were fined. Further, we collected the vehicle data (of other district vehicles) and forwarded the details of tax defaulters to the respective RTO in districts across Tamil Nadu.”
Regional Transport Officer, D Dhamodaran said, “Fines have been collected from 156 tourist vehicles and trucks for carrying passengers over the allotted passenger limit and 134 vehicles were fined for carrying an excessive payload. Apart from this, 304 vehicles were functioning without permits, 3356 vehicles were fined for speeding vehicles, 435 vehicles for functioning without Fitness Certificate, 1,531 vehicles were fined for functioning without PUC certificate, 571 vehicles have been fined for failure to maintain red reflective stickers and 282 vehicles were fined for broken taillight. Over `87.99 lakh of fines have been collected for these offenses.” The random checks will continue and vehicles failing to hold the required certification and tax defaulters would be fined, he added.