New Universal Number Plates in Punjab

The Punjab Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department EX&NC has decided to launch new vehicle number plates in the province after several requests by the Punjab Safe City Authority. These universal plates for vehicles will be introduced after June 2017 for which proposal has been finalized by the department.
The New Number Plate Format
According to the final proposal by Excise & taxation department, three alphabets and three digits will be used in all the vehicles for their identification.
Apart from that, total 4 digits are proposed to be used in two wheelers that will be helpful for their separation from other vehicle types.
Private vehicles in the whole province will get alphabets of AAA for start of their number plates. Vehicles from different cities of the province will not be distinguished. Vehicle’s year of registration will also be absent from these new number plates.
A slightly different number plate format will be given to commercial vehicles, ambulances and govt. and semi govt. vehicles. Number plates of these vehicles will start from GAA instead of AAA.
There will be no change in the pattern and design of these number plates. But in order to make it easier for the security cameras of Punjab Safe City Authority PSCA, the size of number plates will be increased in order to make them readable.
The Reason Behind the Change in Number Plates
By the mid of this year, PSCA will install more than 10,000 HD CCTV cameras in order to detect automated car number plates. But the current size and format of these number plates is a hurdle in this project and it made the PSCA to demand change in number plates. It is difficult for the cameras to read these number plates successfully due to small font size and year of registration on these plates.
Due to this, there was suggestion to make the text larger than the current one by the authority but the excise department was of the view to keep the same size. On this matter, both ET&NC and PSCA met on numerous occasions and after which moderate increase in the size of number plates was decided.
Benefits to the Car Owners & Government
With these new universal number plates, the load on Lahore’s motoring branch will be reduced. Currently, city specific number plates are issued by all the regional motoring branches of the ET&NC for which car owners visit specific regional office for their vehicle’s number plate.
Due to higher resale values, most vehicles are registered with a Lahore number plate that produces extra burden on Lahore’s motoring branch. But the lower resale value of cars of other cities will be eliminated with the introduction of universal number plates for the whole province and it will release excise authorities and car owners from extra burden.
Possible Issues of the New Scheme
It is almost impossible to identify all cars in Punjab with three digit codes. The 6 digit code will make it difficult to identify all current and future cars in Punjab as there are millions of cars in Punjab and many more will be come on roads in future. This format will also be proved inadequate after few years even if these new number plates are used on new cars by the department.
Recently, the Punjab govt. also started operation against fake number plates and they have to restart their campaign in case of change in the format once again. Unless numbers of all the current car owners are not changed, full advantage of standardized number plates can’t be taken.
Final Implementation of the New Number Plates
After finalizing the proposal, it has been sent for approval to the provincial cabinet. After few small adjustments, these new number plates will be introduced.
Later this year, the government’s contract with vendor of current number plates will expire after which a contract will be signed for the new universal number plates.