Telangana Govt fails to put brakes on vehicle insurance racket

Hyderabad: The nexus between the brokers and officials in the transport department continues as there have been irregularities with regard to insurance of the vehicles. The brokers manage to get their work done without the insurance and few officials support them.

According to sources in the department, the nexus between the brokers and some of the officials in the department is leading to irregularities and also posing risk to the motorists. All the documents including insurance are necessary for any transaction to get completed in the transport department. However, ever since there was an increase in the first party insurance fee, the brokers have found a way to resort to manipulations along with the collusion by some of the staff.

Generally, vehicles come for fitness and other transactions in the RTA office. According to officials about 150 vehicles including lorries, motor cabs, goods vehicles, tourist buses, tractor trolleys, etc, undergo fitness test. For the transaction to get completed the insurance policy number has to be mentioned in the application. Sources said that the nexus is so strong that a single policy number was used for many vehicles. If an inquiry is ordered into this, more irregularities would come out, the sources said.

Sources said that fake documents are prepared by entering a fake insurance policy number in the column for completing the transaction. A motorist, who did not want to be quoted, said that he could get the work done without paying insurance fee when his vehicle went for fitness. The applicant had to shell out some money (less than the insurance fee) to get his work done. Sources said that money is paid to officials at different levels for getting the work done.

It is learnt that the corrupt officials specify the validity of the insurance policy on the day of the transaction to avoid action in case of any incident. Attempts are made to burn the application papers to avoid the complications in future, sources said. Recently, insurance racket was busted by the police. The racket came to light when a policy holder approached an insurance firm for a claim. If the insurance companies cross check with the RTA office records, they would get to know about the irregularities, said sources.

The Telangana Auto and Motor Welfare Union general secretary M Dayanand demanded an inquiry by the Anti Corruption Bureau (AC) to bring out the truth. The authorities should check the records of the last five years or at least after the prices of insurance policy were increased so that they can get to know about the irregularities.