The state government has ordered all registering authorities associated with the transport department to scrutinise databases and identify vehicles that have secured the compulsory fitness certificate (CF) without paying taxes and renewing permits.

A notification by the state transport secretary, Saumitra Mohan, said “notices shall be issued by the concerned registering authorities (RA) to all such vehicle owners for production of the defaulting vehicles before them for re-examination to ensure compliance with the provisions of the relevant rules.”

The immediate trigger: The transport department has found that owners of over 6,000 commercial vehicles, registered in Calcutta and its adjoining districts — North and South 24-Parganas, Howrah, and Hooghly — have secured the mandatory fitness certificate from centres outside Bengal.

A majority of them have allegedly obtained the certificates without moving out of the state, a recent survey by the transport department revealed.

The survey indicated that the certificates were reportedly gathered from privately operated fitness centres situated in various states, such as Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The types of vehicles encompassed all models, ranging from autorickshaws to heavy goods vehicles, including lorries.

“We have found that a significant number of commercial vehicle owners who don’t have a national permit to move throughout the country bagged these certificates from private operators. There must be a mechanism which allows owners of commercial vehicles to bag fitness certificates from testing centres in other states without moving their vehicles outside Bengal,” state transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty told Metro.

The government notification, issued late August, states that “registered owners of vehicles who have obtained a Certificate of Fitness from authorised testing centres located in other states shall be asked to produce documentary evidence justifying movement of their vehicles to other states”.

Senior officials of the transport department said a majority of these vehicle owners were found to have overshot their last dates for taking the fitness tests in Bengal and opted for another state, possibly to avoid paying the penalty for taking the fitness tests after the due dates.

“A commercial vehicle owner faces a penalty of ₹50 a day after failing to undertake the fitness test within a stipulated date. For a year’s lag, the penalty amount is ₹18,000,” said an officer.

Transport department officials stumbled upon this trend when a police officer on traffic duty in Howrah spotted a rickety autorickshaw on the road in June and checked the papers. The vehicle had a valid fitness certificate from another state. The officer realised that the autorickshaw had found a way to get the certificate because the owner did not have a national permit to operate in different states.

He alerted the regional transport office in Howrah. This discovery initiated a thorough examination of the records held by the state government regarding commercial vehicles that were awaiting fitness tests and those that had recently passed them.

“We found that over 6,000 vehicles have taken such fitness tests between January and May this year, and the loss to the state exchequer was over ₹9 crores,” Chakraborty said.

“All regional transport officers have been instructed to prosecute these vehicles for plying without valid fitness certificates,” he said.

The state government has decided to write to the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) and urge that all testing centres must upload videos of physical testing of a vehicle’s fitness on Vahan, the national database of registered vehicles and their status.