WADALA RTO HAS NO RECORD OF OVER 200 NEWLY ‘REGISTERED’ AUTOS, REVEALS RTI QUERY

Mumbai Mirror: Mumbai: Tuesday, 29 December 2015.

In what can be said as a shocking revelation by an RTI query, the Regional Transport Office (RTO) Wadala (MH03) has no documentation whatsoever of over 200 newly registered autos plying in the city under series 103BT and 105BN.

While replying to a Right To Information (RTI) query, Vjay Bhope, assistant RTO official Mumbai (East), claimed that at present they have information of only 16 out of 200 autos plying in the city.

As per the RTI copy available with Mirror, details of only 13 autos out of 103BT series and 3 autos out of 105BN series are available with the department. Information of the remaining permit holders pertaining to their numbers is not available and process is on to suspend the numbers from the system. "No such data has been prepared on auto numbers whose details are not with the RTO," says RTI reply.

The applicant, Shakeel Shaikh, had witnessed an accident between a brand new auto with a 'BT' series number plate and high-end sedan car few months ago. The auto driver called up his owner and narrated the incident. However after hearing instructions from the owner, the driver fled the scene without formally registering a complaint with the police.

Shaikh said, "The rear side of the auto was badly damaged. And timely repair of the damages would have been covered under insurance but the way the driver fled from the scene raised doubts in my mind."

Out of curiosity Shaikh asked for details pertaining to the same auto to Mumbai RTO East at Wadala. However instead of providing Sheikh with information, authorities started delaying the application.

"We investigated on our own and came to know that there is some fraud being committed in the Wadala RTO department as it's impossible for any auto to ply without getting a registration number from them since RTO being the only authority which allots the registration number," said Sheikh.

An RTO officer, on condition of anonymity, said, "If we go by the figure, RTO has no records of over 2,000 odd autos plying in the city. In spite of raising the issue with higher authorities, no action has been initiated against officers concerned for allotting numbers for auto after verifying the documents."