Vehicle registration plates of India

All motorised road vehicles in India are tagged with a registration or license number. The Vehicle registration plate (commonly known as number plate) number is issued by the district-level Regional Transport Office (RTO) of respective states — the main authority on road matters. The number plates are placed in the front and back of the vehicle. By law, all plates are required to be in modern Arabic numerals with Latin letters. Other guidelines include having the plate lit up at night and the restriction of the fonts that could be used. In some states such as Sikkim, cars bearing outside plates are barred from entering restricted areas.

Vehicle registration plates are formatted as follows:

The current format of the registration index consists of 4 parts, They are:

This scheme of numbering has some advantages:

In some states (such as the state of Delhi, Gujarat and Bihar) the initial 0 of the district code is omitted; thus Delhi district 2 numbers appear as DL 2 not DL 02, GJ 5 not GJ 05, BR 8 not BR 08.

The state of Delhi has an additional code in the registration code:

DL 11 CAA 1111

Where DL is the two letter code for Delhi (DL). The additional C (for category of vehicle) is the letter S for two-wheelers, C for cars and SUVs, E for electric vehicles (in some cases only), P for public passenger vehicles such as buses, R for three-wheeled rickshaws, T for tourist-licensed vehicles and taxis, V for pick-up trucks and vans and Y for hire vehicles. This system is also applicable in other states. (For example, Rajasthan, where RJ is the two letter code, P is for passenger vehicles, C for cars, S for scooters and G for goods vehicles.)

All Indian states and Union Territories have their own two-letter code. This two-letter referencing came into action in the 1980s. Before that each district or Regional Transport Officer's office had a three-letter code which did not mention the state. This led to a fair degree of confusion — for example, MMC 8259 could fit in anywhere in the country. To avoid this ambiguity the state code was included along with the district or RTO's office. In some states, such as Maharashtra, licence plates before 1960, when the state was known as Bombay Presidency, bear notations such as BMC.

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