Regional Transport Office
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Type | Government agency |
| Parent agency | Ministry of Road Transport and Highways |
The Regional Transport Office or Regional Transport Authority (RTO/RTA) is the organisation of the Indian government responsible for maintaining a database of drivers and a database of vehicles for various states of India. The RTO issues driving licences, organises collection of vehicle excise duty (also known as road tax and road fund licence) and sells personalised registrations.
Along with this, the RTO is also responsible to inspect vehicle's insurance and clear the pollution test.
The RTO identifies untaxed vehicles, and identify keepers of cars entering various Indian states, or who exceed speed limits on a road that has speed cameras by matching the cars to their keepers utilising the RTO database.
The High Security Registration plates (HSRP) was introduced to help reduce vehicle crime and improve security. It is intended to deter criminals from disguising stolen cars with the identity of written off or scrapped vehicles.
The owner of a vehicle can apply and get duplicate copy of the vehicle registration certificate from the concerned RTO office if it is stolen, lost, destructed and completely written off. A complaint should be lodged to the police station which is situated under the jurisdiction / area of lost before approaching the regional transport officer. After completing the formalities, the owner has to submit FORM 26 and the Police Certificate to the Registering Authority along with the required documents for applying duplicate vehicle registration certificate.
Official diplomatic and consular vehicles are registered with the RTO.
RTOs in India have a notoriety of being corrupt and bribing has become an "everyday phenomenon".
In 2014, the then Union Minister of Road Transport, Nitin Gadkari, proposed partial closing of RTOs by increasing online functions in order to curb corruption.
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Wikipedia