Kathmandu, Feb 9: The Supreme Court has issued an interim order directing authorities not to use the English language on embossed number plates installed on vehicles.
A bench of Justices Kumar Regmi and Mahesh Sharma Paudel issued the order on Sunday, instructing that English should not be used on embossed number plates.
Earlier, on August 4, a meeting of the Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport, along with concerned ministers from all seven provinces, had decided to make embossed number plates mandatory from September 17.
The interim order came in response to a writ petition filed by advocates Ram Bahadur Raut, Rameshwar Raut, and others, naming the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers at Singha Durbar, the Department of Transport Management, and other bodies as defendants.
The government decision had also drawn strong public opposition. When the mandatory use of electronic number plates prepared in English and Roman script for all vehicles was announced, the Language Commission also raised objections. Language Commission Chair Dr Gopal Thakur issued a statement saying the decision went against constitutional provisions and demanded that number plates be written in Devanagari script.
According to the Department of Transport Management, Nepal has between five and six million vehicles. The department claims embossed number plates would make it easier to maintain vehicle records nationwide.
The government had fixed the cost of installing embossed number plates. The fees were set at Rs 2,500 for motorcycles, Rs 2,900 for three-wheeled vehicles, Rs 3,200 for four-wheeled vehicles, and Rs 3,600 for large vehicles.
So far, more than 800,000 embossed number plates have been produced, and over 80,000 have already been installed.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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