- I Paid A Bribe
- 14 years ago
- 976 views
The Sharks of PVD's
- Transport
- Registration of Vehicle
- Paid INR 6,000
This is a story of my actual experience.
I (59 yrs) along with my wife went to Public Vehicle Dept. at Alipore, 24Prganas for Statutory Transfer of Registration of a light motor vehicle that was registered in the name of our only son (33yrs) and needed to be transferred in my name as desired by his widow and grieved mother, after his tragic and untimely demise.
On arriving at the place we failed to find any Enquiry or Assistance Counter, though some people or tout rather, on the contrary, were meandering around in an effort to catch likely clients. We tumbled upon a few of them with our query and pat came the reply, almost unanimously, that it could be done for an ongoing market price of Rs.7500.00 though we shall be provided with 'Official Receipts' of about Rs.2000.00 only, the balance of the sum being allotted for warming the hands and pockets of a few officer and clerk, while keeping Rs.1000.00 as his service charge.
After much bargaining a deal had to be stuck to get the job done, for no less than Rs.6000.00 which I had to pay upfront along with statutory Forms duly filled-up as well as other related documents and affidavit as required by law to facilitate the transfer of registration in due course.
Therefore, to summarize this episode it can be said with absolute certainty, in view of our experience of this instance and many previous ones, as well as experiences of other people heard often enough, that at-least 100-150 % more, in some cases even much more, of the Official Fees, is required to be divulge to get any job done at Public Vehicle Departments of any Districts in West Bengal.
This phenomenon needs to be corrected as soon as possible. A cleaner, fairer and effective system could be implemented by the introduction of online processing of documents and deposit of fees and fines; as is evident from the experience of other Government and Municipal departments' success stories.
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dachintya@gmail.com