Financial Express: New Delhi: Tuesday, January 16, 2018.
The Delhi
High Court today asked the Centre to place before it the rules regarding the
display of only the State Emblem of India on cars of constitutional authorities
and dignitaries such as the President, instead of their registration numbers. A
bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar directed
the concerned ministry to check the actual position and inform it before the
next date of hearing on February 26. “Please ascertain the exact position and
place it before us,” the bench said after the counsel for the Centre sought
more time to file a response. The court’s directions came on a plea seeking to
enforce the display of registration number on cars of constitutional
authorities and dignitaries. The petition, filed by an NGO Nyayabhoomi, claimed
that the practice of displaying the state emblem of four lions, instead of the
registration numbers, make the cars conspicuous and the dignitaries become easy
targets for terrorists and anyone with malicious intent. “The practice of
replacing the registration mark with the State Emblem of India, instead of
displaying them both, is arbitrary and symptomatic of the desire to rule rather
than to serve,” the petition alleged.
The public
interest litigation (PIL) by NGO’s secretary Rakesh Agarwal also sought
direction to the Delhi government and Delhi Police to seize the cars used by
the Rashtrapati Bhawan, Vice President, Raj Niwas and Protocol division of the
Ministry of External Affairs for not being registered under the Motor Vehicles
Act. The plea referred to an RTI response by the Ministry of External Affairs
saying none of its 14 cars maintained by its protocol division were registered.
On the other
hand, the plea claimed that the Rashtrapati Bhawan refused to supply the
registration numbers of its cars on the ground that disclosure of such
information would endanger the security of the state and life and physical
safety of the President.
It said a
person meeting with an accident involving such a car cannot bring any claim
against it as due to the absence of any identification mark, the vehicle’s
ownership cannot be known and the citizens get the message that if a dignitary
could disobey the law and get away with it, so could they.
It also
sought prosecution of the owners of cars being used by such dignitaries in a
time-bound manner and sought a direction to the ministries of home affairs and
external affairs to register the cars used by the dignitaries and obtain their
insurance policies.