A premium car number worth a million

New Delhi, Apr 29 (UNI) What is there in a car registration number? If it is DLS-1, then it could be worth a million.

Industrialist Lalit Kumar Bagla of Hindustan Adhesives claims that he has a right over the number, which is allotted to his family for a Fiat car since 1970.

Bagla, who loves to ride only the vehicle with registration number 'One', claims that he had spent more than a million rupees in court battles to transfer the number from his Honda City to a newly acquired Ford Fiesta.

Bagla's father Satyanarayan Bagla had obtained DLS-1 registration number for the Fiat car 37 years ago. Subsequently it was transferred to the Honda City.

When Bagla went to the Delhi Transport Authority for transfer of the number from the Honda Accent to Ford Fiesta in August 2006, the authorities refused to oblige him.

Bagla filed a petition in the Delhi High Court, seeking directions to the transport authorities to transfer the registration number to its new car.

He prayed that he was prepared to scrap the Honda City car, if the number was transferred to the new car.

After deliberations for six months and 10 hearings, the court dismissed the petition saying that the authorities have expressed their inability to allot the number due to security reasons.

Justice B D Ahmed said, ''The petition is dismissed as the authorities have stopped transferring the old number to a new vehicle due to security concerns.'' The Delhi Transport Authority had stopped interchange of the number from October 2004, the counsel for state transport authority said.

Bagla, also the owner of Kolkata-based Bagla Motors, claimed that he had spent about a million rupees to get the registration number for his car.

Apart from DLS-1, he has a Mercedes Benz with number DLO-1 in the capital, a Chevrolet Optra with WBH-1 and Honda City with WBG-1 at Kolkata.

Bagla claimed that his father, in his registered will, transferred the numbers to him and his daughter-in-law Parbati.

Asked what was there in these numbers, Bagla said he was emotionally attached to them.

Earlier in August 2001, the Delhi High Court had directed the Delhi transport authority to transfer DLO-1 from a Fiat car to Mercedes Benz, Bagla claimed in the petition.

Even Bagla has fought two cases in Calcutta High Court in February 2004 and September 2006 to transfer number WBH-1 from Maruti-800 to a Chevrolet Optra and WBG-1 from Maruti to a Honda City.

Counsel Parmit Roy, appearing for the petitioner, submitted that if the West Bengal Transport authority could transfer the number from an old car to a new one, then why could the Delhi authorities not do it? A crestfallen Bagla was contemplating to file a revision petition in the Supreme Court, challenging the High Court order.

UNI