Karnataka Transportation Department Confiscates Several Luxury Cars in Bengaluru | Source: @ChristinMP_TOI | Photo credit: Twitter
It is not news that India has high tariffs on imported vehicles in India. Don’t you believe Well, here’s some news for you: According to the current regulations, imported new cars in India are subject to an import duty of up to 100 percent. The import duty on used cars, on the other hand, is a whopping 125 percent. Yes it is a lot. However, as you can imagine, some people are trying to get around this tax in a number of ways. In other cases, people forego paying road tax when ownership changes between states. In case you did not know if the owner of the vehicle is moving to another state or the vehicle is being sold to an owner in another state where it will be used, the law requires the new owner to apply for a new vehicle registration certificate and pay for it required vehicle tax in the new federal state. Given that this can be a somewhat lengthy and expensive process, many car owners usually avoid applying for a new RC and the like. To prevent this from happening, officials frequently take trips to check the papers of luxury vehicles, and that is exactly what the Karnataka Transport Department recently did. Yes, the state’s Department of Transportation was recently on a trip to check luxury car registration papers in the area and guess what? They confiscated not one or two, but several premium and luxury cars in the state capital.
Among the many of these recently seized cars in Bengaluru was a last-generation Rolls-Royce Phantom that previously belonged to Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan. Other brands on this list of confiscated luxury cars include Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Land Rover, and Porsche. The Karnatake Transportation Department stated that these cars were confiscated because the required documents were not available.
As expected, some of these vehicles seized in Bengaluru were registered outside of Karnataka. The state’s Department of Transportation claimed that the owners of these vehicles did not pay road tax in Karnataka, resulting in a loss to the Karnataka Treasury. The seized vehicles will initially be parked at the Road Transport Office (RTO) in Nelamangala, Bengaluru. Owners who sign up to claim their vehicles are likely to pay heavy fines for breaking the rules and failing to transfer the RC to Karnataka.