600 fitness certificates issued in one month to commercial vehicles

Tribune News Service

PK Jaiswar

Amritsar, August 27

Around 600 fitness certificates for commercial vehicles were issued by the motor vehicle staff office over the last one month, it is learnt.

This was revealed during the scrutinising of the records confiscated by the Vigilance Bureau during a recent raid carried out at the MVI office here four days ago. Sleuths of the Vigilance Department had grilled MVI Davinder Singh in this regard.

A Vigilance Bureau official privy to the investigations wishing not to be named said the records were still to be scrutinised. He said every fitness certificate issued by the department would be investigated. He said the investigations were still in the initial stages and a final report would be sent to higher authorities and the Punjab Government which would take further necessary action.

Source said the number of fitness certificates issued during the period was not practically possible if fitness of each vehicle is genuinely physically checked. He said the MVI has additional charge of other districts, including Gurdaspur also. He has to visit other districts also for the same.

It was alleged that fitness certificates were issued without proper checking. The vigilance bureau had exposed a scam of issuing fitness certificates of the vehicles without physical checking after taking a bribe in Sangrur. Following this, the Punjab government ordered conducting simultaneous raids in different districts including Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Ferozepur, Faridkot, Mansa, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur.

During the raid, the Vigilance Bureau nabbed a motor vehicle inspector posted in Jalandhar, Naresh Kaler and two private agents Rampal and Mohan Lal. The bureau also recovered Rs 12.50 lakh of bribe amount and confiscated documents pertaining to suspicious issuance of fitness certificates to vehicles.

Varinder Singh, SSP, Vigilance (Amritsar), Varinder Singh said nothing could be said at the moment as the matter was still under investigations.

As per the norms, the vehicles were to be physically inspected by MVI staff before issuing the fitness certificate, which is mandatory to ply the vehicle on road. Nevertheless, the RTA and MVI staff were allegedly passing the vehicles only on the basis of documents without physical inspections of vehicles.

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