My terrible experience transferring an out-of-state car into Karnataka

Imagine wanting to do the right thing, pay your (terribly exorbitant) taxes, and then hung out to dry figuring out how to get a govt. controlled variety of registration plates by yourself.

BHPian Chetan_Rao recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Found another gap in the HSRP process.

We transferred a car in the family from MP to KA. The process itself is still a slow-cooking nightmare, with the RTO insisting on doing everything via snail mail even though both states are Vahan compliant and online. We paid taxes in mid-2023, finally got the number allotment challan this week after several visits and escalations (presiding RTO changed thrice in this period!). No ETA on when the RC will arrive. They said 'eventually', which curiously is also my answer to 'When will we arrive?' when commuting in Bangalore.

When we finally got a KA number allotted, RTO says you'll need to get plates yourself, none of our business.

'Simple Saar, online order maadi! Or ask a dealer.'

All you get for paying a small fortune is a half an A4 sheet printout, not even a full page. They'll create pointless paperwork by the ton even though the whole Vahan system is online, but sure let's save half a page on the challan printing. Yay! Go green!

Tried online, but one can only order HSRP for cars older than April 2019 in KA (cars newer than that are presumed to already have HSRP). This car was a Dec 2020 original registration and did come with HSRP then, but we obviously need new plates now. Turns out RTO never gave serious thought to the re-registration use case when making HSRP mandatory, in a state with a sizeable population of transferred cars that might be newer than April 2019. Net outcome, online self-ordering is a no-go.

Approached brand dealership and it turns out they don't know how to handle it either, at least don't have a clearly defined process. Credit where it's due, they didn't simply claim helplessness and shoo me away. +1 Kalyani Motors and Maruti for customer-centricity. What followed was a multi-hour exercise to find a way, and we finally did manage to place an order somehow via the dealer process. Plates are expected to arrive in a week.

Imagine wanting to do the right thing, pay your (terribly exorbitant) taxes, and then hung out to dry figuring out how to get a govt. controlled variety of registration plates by yourself.

In a country riddled with incompetent bureaucracy, our RTOs probably take the cake. And they have no incentive to change because they're minting money as-is, with no obligation to deliver services - efficiently or sometimes at all - they're getting paid a fortune for.

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