Lockdown woes: Panvel RTO suffers Rs130 crore revenue loss

With 75 per cent dip in vehicle registration, the Regional Transport Office (RTO) of Panvel, under whose jurisdiction the Deputy RTO offices of Panvel, Pen, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg come, has faced a loss of Rs130.19 crore revenue during the lockdown period.

The RTO office earns its revenue from registration of vehicles, issuing licences, renewing licences and fines collected by the flying squad of the department.

“During the lockdown period, the registration of vehicles went down drastically. As the automobile industry was shut, none made new purchases and hence there was no registration happening. The licence renewal and issuing new licenses had also taken a back seat due to complete lockdown,” Panvel RTO Gajanan Thombare said.

From April 2019 to August 2019, 20,581 new registration of vehicles was done whereas during the same period in the year 2020, only 5,014 registrations were done taking the registration of vehicles down by 75 per cent.

Thombare added, “The number of vehicle registrations are slowly increasing and we hope to get more number in coming months. With an economic crisis going on, there are chances that the registrations might not match up to last year’s monthly numbers.”

In 2019, the number of two-wheelers that got registered in these five months were 12,055 and 4,261 four wheelers while this year, it came down to 2,726 and 1,860, respectively.

The revenue earned by the Panvel, Pen, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg Dy RTO offices under Panvel RTO in 2019 during the five-months-period was Rs200.66 cr while this it came down to Rs70.47 cr.