Bengaluru: It's a trend that is catching on. Merely owning a swanky car or bike is no longer enough for Bengaluru’s fashion conscious. Number plates in strange fonts, logos and special characters and colours are the latest accessories in demand among the “it crowd.” The only problem is unlike tattoos, nail art and other fashion statements, creative number plates are proving a headache for the police as they provide a camouflageas good as fake registrations that come in handy for criminals.
Moreover, they are a violation of the Central Motor Vehicles Act. But this fact seems to have escaped the 1,23,189 vehicle-owners who were caught sporting the designer number plates in January and February of this year alone. Last year the police caught as many as 2,44,174 vehicle owners sporting "defective number registration number plate," a drastic increase over the 62,785 cases the law men came across in 2016.
Says Mr Ifran Khan, owner of Crazy Carz Café , “There is a demand from the vehicle owners for the customised number plates. We design them according to RTO rules, but sometimes the owners ask for a different font and various stickers. If we don’t give in we could lose them as customers.” Listen to bike owner, Nagarjun, who sports a fancy number plate “I just wanted to decorate my bike,” he shrugs. The only problem is he could be fined '100 the first time he is caught sporting it and lose his licence altogether should he be caught a second time!
