There has been a general directive from the central government to terminate fitness tests and fitness certificates issued at the RTOs for commercial vehicles such as heavy and medium motor vehicles, passenger vehicles, and light motor vehicles with effect from April 1. Certificates will be valid only upon passing a fitness test in a private Automated Testing Station, while the fitness test conducted in public sectors will be disregarded.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in its circular defines the RTO fitness checks on goods and passenger vehicles effective from April 1. This responsibility has now been entirely handed over to private ATS centers.
Some believe this shift is meant to sever hand-in-glove collusion between the RTO officers and agents; however, critics say that this system just replaces one corrupt practice with another and provides personal players an opportunity to monopolize.
Two years ago, a proposal was made by the central government that all fitness certification of vehicles should take place only via private ATS. This plan for gradually phasing out RTOs has now kicked in full gear as of April 1.
As per the norms, every two years, starting from the eighth year of registration and then annually thereafter, commercial vehicles such as luxury buses, school buses, trucks, ambulances, and taxis have to be fit for driving.
Previously, it consisted of a fixed fee at the RTO and getting certified; since then, private ATS centers, backed by the state government, have been empowered to collect fees ranging from ₹800 to ₹2,000 for these certifications.
Worryingly, more than 20 have already been implicated with irregularities among the 53 ATS centres existing in the state. With the intention of reducing the workload in RTO, the government has outsourced the fitness testing and certification procedure to the private ATS centres.
Ten expert committees were then appointed to oversee investigations into allegations against nearly 24 ATS centers. They found that one of the centers tampered with testing systems to issue fitness certificates to unfit vehicles in exchange for money. Instead of shutting them down, the government has given them more jobs.