The 45-day-long delay in the re-registration (re-passing) of old private vehicles has finally been resolved. Following fresh guidelines from the Office of the Commissioner of Transport in Gandhinagar, all RTO and ARTO offices across Gujarat will resume work related to registration renewal and fitness certification of private vehicles from Monday.
The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways recently amended the rules for vehicle fitness testing and registration. Under the new rules, newly registered non-transport (private) vehicles will not require a separate fitness certificate at the time of registration. However, once a private vehicle completes 15 years, it must undergo a fitness test every five years, and the test must be conducted only at an Automated Testing Station (ATS).
The revised rules also state that if a vehicle fails its first fitness test and is not declared fit within 180 days, it will be classified as an “End of Life Vehicle” (ELV). The notification also introduced new fees for registration renewal, but uncertainty over the implementation led to the suspension of registration renewals for old private vehicles across Gujarat for the past 45 days.
To address the confusion, the Transport Commissioner’s Office has now clarified that vehicle owners will not have to pay the additional late fee of Rs 50 per day for delays in completing the first mandatory fitness test, as the rule has been introduced for the first time.
However, once the first fitness certificate has been issued, any delay in future fitness renewals will attract a late penalty of Rs 50 per day.
The suspension had affected thousands of vehicle owners across the state. In Vadodara alone, the re-registration process of more than 900 vehicles had been put on hold, causing repeated visits to the RTO and inconvenience to vehicle owners.
With the new clarification in place, the re-registration and fitness certification process has now resumed, bringing relief to affected vehicle owners.