Hyderabad: The Telangana state government may have to arrange for a new convoy for Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who wants the vehicles to be painted white. The vehicles are currently black in colour. Mr Rao asked officials to get the cars repainted on the advise of his astrologers. However, the CM’s security officials said that it would be difficult to repaint all the six Toyota Fortuners and it would be better to replace them with new white cars. If that happens, the government has to shell out nearly Rs 4 crore.
Though repainting of vehicles is allowed as per RTA rules, the officials are of the opinion that the body of the vehicles will be affected as the old colour has to be removed and the vehicles’ aesthetics would get spoilt. To change the colour, RTA rules say that, “You first have to take your RC book, along with the colour shade sample, to your RTO. Get a letter of approval for the colour. Get your vehicle painted in the changed colour. Take your vehicle to the RTO again, show the colour and the RTO’s approval letter, pay the necessary fees and get your RC book entry edited by the RTO.”
These vehicles were purchased by the then chief minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy in June 2012.
Security officials advised Mr Rao to allot these old vehicles to other ministers or high-level officials. Normally, whenever new CMs take charge, they replace old vehicles with new ones. This has been a practice for a long time. Former chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy replaced Ambassador cars, used by N. Chandrababu Naidu, with five new Tata Safaris. YSR again replaced the convoy with Mahindra Scorpios in May 2007 and used it till his death in September 2009. Later, K. Rosaiah continued with the same convoy for 14 months. Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy replaced the convoy with six Toyota Fortuners in June 2012. He again replaced two vehicles with the Toyota land cruiser Prado in October 2013. However, it remains to be seen whether Mr Rao opts for a new convoy or sticks to repainting.
