A case has been registered against 71 Bharat Stage IV (BS4) emission norms vehicles with fake insurance policies in Andhra Pradesh, said state Transport Joint Commissioner S.A.V. Prasada Rao on Tuesday.
During a press conference, Rao said that the issue, of vehicles, being bought as scrap and illegally registered as BS 4 vehicles, was deepening. He said that now it was found that the insurance policies shown for 71 vehicles were bogus ones and an investigation was underway.
This comes after the Supreme Court's order of banning the sale and purchase of BS4 emission norms vehicles in India after April 2020. These vehicles purchased till March 2020 would remain operational throughout the period of registration, that is 15 years.
While explaining the case, Rao said, "Jatadhara industries and C Gopal Reddy company, who have a direct link to JC Prabhakar Reddy, former MLA and TDP leader, had bought 154 BS3 vehicles from Ashok Leyland company, Nagaland as scrap. They illegally registered them as BS4 vehicles. Some of the vehicles are sold in neighbouring states Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Telangana, Chattisgarh and 101 of them are being run in Andhra Pradesh."
Andhra Pradesh transport department enquired on how the insurances were obtained for BS3 vehicles, as BS4 vehicles. They created fake policy documents for registered vehicles and made transactions with those fake documents, as per Rao.
He also informed that cases would be filed under Indian Vehicle Act on selling and running vehicles against rules, illegal registrations, bogus insurances.
"We will inquire about the role of those who bought those vehicles from them. These vehicles are being illegally run since more than one and a half year" he said.
"We wrote to the Ministry of Transport to cancel the registrations of these BS3 vehicles and also informed the officials of Nagaland, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. We further requested the insurance compes to be careful while insuring BS3 vehicles," Rao added.
( With inputs from ANI )