0001 for ₹36 lakh, 0007 for ₹16.5 lakh: Fancy number plate craze in Chandigarh

Apart from the costliest bid, the RLA Chandigarh also witnessed an all-time record revenue inflow of ₹4.08 crore.

Published on: Aug 23, 2025, 22:52:47 IST

By HT News Desk

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Chandigarh's e-auction for vanity numbers witnessed some record highs, with one of the bids being the costliest registration number ever sold in the city.

The second highest bid was won for the number ‘0003’ at ₹17.84 lakh, followed by the number ‘0009’ at ₹16.82 lakh. (Representational/ Unsplash)

In the latest e-auction by the Registering and Licensing Authority (RLA), the vanity number ‘0001’ of the of the CH01-DA series was sold for ₹36.43 lakh, the costliest registration number in the city, The Indian Express reported. The reserve price of the number stood at ₹50,000, with multiple bidders contesting for its ownership.

Meanwhile, the special number ‘0007’, associated typically with James Bond due to the intelligence code ‘007’, also saw a tight bid, selling for ₹16.50 in the auction.

The second highest bid was won for the number ‘0003’ at ₹17.84 lakh, followed by the number ‘0009’ at ₹16.82 lakh, according to The Indian Express.

Apart from the costliest bid, the RLA Chandigarh also witnessed an all-time record revenue inflow of ₹4.08 crore. This was the highest-ever revenue collected from a single auction of vehicle numbers in the city, according to officials. It boosted the overall collection by more than ₹1.1 crore from the previous time.

The auction was for the CH01-DA series, for numbers 0001 to 9999, and was held for four days, from August 19 to August 22. The e-auction led to the selling of 577 registration numbers, which included remaining vanity/ special numbers from the previous series, The Indian Express report stated.

The previous record for the most expensive registration number in Chandigarh was set in May 2025, with the number ‘0001’ of the CH01-CZ series being sold for ₹31 lakh in an e-auction. The number saw aggressive bidding at that time too, eventually selling for over 60 times its reserve price. The auction had generated a revenue of ₹2.94 crore in total, according to The Indian Express.

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