The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) released a notification introducing the new BH series for vehicle registration plates. The BH series vehicle registration attempts to help people who move around the country on a frequent basis, as it will not require them to get a new state registration for their vehicles each time they move to a new state. Instead, the BH series number plate will be valid across India. This registration facility will be available to Defence personnel, Government employees, and private-sector employees on a voluntary basis.
At present, owners are required to re-register their vehicle within 12 months of moving to another state. The process involves getting an NOC from the state where the vehicle was originally registered, then paying the road tax for the state they are moving to, following which their vehicle gets a new RC. Owners can also file an application for a refund of the road tax from the previous state.
With the BH series vehicle registration facility, owners need not apply for an NOC from the previous state, nor will they need to transfer their RC to the new state, as the BH registration will be valid throughout the country. The BH series vehicle registration plate will follow the format ‘YY BH #### XX’, where YY denotes the year of first registration, BH stands for Bharat Series, #### denotes the random generated number between 0001-9999 and lastly the XX will be for the alphabetical series.
Under the BH series, the road tax will be levied for two years, or in multiples of two years, as opposed to the 15 year road tax period at present. Owners will then be able to re-register their vehicle after 14 years from the date of first registration by paying the road tax on an annual basis, which will be half the amount compared to what they paid earlier. The road tax amount for BH series non-transport vehicles at the time of registration will be 8 per cent for vehicles priced below Rs 10 lakh, 10 per cent for vehicles priced between Rs 10-20 lakh, and 12 per cent for vehicles costing above Rs 20 lakh. Furthermore, an extra 2 per cent will be charged on diesel vehicles, whereas electric vehicles receive a 2 per cent relaxation.