Chandigarh, April 30 (IANS) It took Rs.700,000 for Seema Goyal to remain ‘number one’ on Chandigarh’s roads as the city resident Friday paid the amount to get the registration number ‘CH-01-AH 0001’ for her Toyota Fortuner.
Chandigarh’s Registration and Licensing Authority (RLA) collected over Rs.5.3 million (Rs.53 lakh) during the auction of ‘CH-01-AH’ series numbers Friday.
The Rs.700,000 price for CH-01-AH 0001 was the highest that the RLA fetched, according to an official.
The reserved price for this number was Rs.25,000, but Goyal, a Sector 21 resident, went a lot higher to buy the number for her sports utility vehicle (SUV).
‘Craze for VIP numbers is back in Chandigarh. Last year also in May, the number ‘0001’ went for Rs.10 lakh. The response to yesterday’s (Friday) auction was very good as compared to previous auctions,’ Vinod Kavle, sub-divisional magistrate (south) and RLA for Chandigarh, told IANS Saturday.
Numbers ‘0009’ (Rs.450,000) and ‘0007’ (Rs.425,000) went for second and third highest bids, respectively. Number ‘0003’ went for Rs.400,000 while ‘0005’ netted Rs.380,000.
‘As many as 73 paid numbers were open for the auction. The total amount collected is Rs.530,1701, which is the highest amount ever collected in such an auction,’ said the official spokesperson of Chandigarh administration here.
In May 2010, a Chandigarh-based real estate agent had bought ‘0001’ number for a whopping Rs.1 million.
In Punjab’s Jalandhar city, 150 km from here, a Delhi-based businessman, Pravin Chaudhary, bought the ‘0001 8242’ series number for his Rs.20 million Bentley car for Rs.725,000 in August 2008.
Chandigarh has the distinction of having one of the highest densities of motor vehicles in the country.
For a population of nearly 1.1 million, there are over 700,000 registered vehicles.
