AHMEDABAD: Don’t be surprised if you find too many private buses with Arunachal Pradesh or Nagaland registration numbers on the roads in Gujarat.
The bus owners with Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland registration numbers in Gujarat are not from the Northeast India state. They are all from Gujarat, and have started registering the vehicles in the far-east of India to save money.
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Officials at the Akhil Gujarat Tourist Vehicle Operators Federation (AGTVOF) said a large number of their members are now getting vehicles registered in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland to save on taxes.
More than two-dozen private bus operators in Gujarat, including Patel Travels, Neeta Travels and Shrinath Travels, have reportedly opened temporary offices in different places in Arunachal Pradesh and Dimapur in Nagaland to facilitate the process of registration of the buses.
So far, more than 1,100 private buses in Gujarat have transferred their vehicle registrations to Arunachal Pradesh, and about 300 of them shifted registrations to Nagaland.
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The AGTVOF official said bus operators save around Rs 4.5 lakhs by transferring the bus registrations to either Arunachal Pradesh or Nagaland.
Bus owners need to pay Rs 40,000 per month as tax in Gujarat, while the rate is as low as Rs 2,000 in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. Some of them have even started getting registrations of their buses from Manipur.
The AGTVOF official claimed private bus operators suffered huge loss during the Covid-19 lockdown, and are not in a position to operate with the sudden increase in price of diesel.
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