Chennai, Jan 9 (IANS): Tamil Nadu Police are to probe the misuse of login credentials of transport authorities on Vahan software for registering banned Bharat Stage -IV vehicles across the state.

The state transport department on an internal inquiry has found that several registrations of Bharat Stage-IV vehicles have been registered in Tamil Nadu between 2020 and 2021 even after the Supreme Court had effected a ban on registration of BS-IV vehicles. This has led to the loss of several lakhs of rupees as road tax to the department. The Supreme court banned the registration of BS-IV vehicles after the emission levels of these engines were not meeting the pollution norms of the Central government.

The Additional Chief Secretary in the transport department, K. Gopal has written a letter to the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police, C. Sylendra Babu requesting a detailed investigation into the scam.

The transport department found that the chassis numbers, registration numbers, engine details, and other original records of vehicles were manipulated and that it was done through the backdoor entry of the data of these vehicles by using the login credentials of senior Transport department officials.

The transport officials told IANS that the department itself was trying to retrieve the backlog entries of vehicles and added that a separate probe by police is also essential to crack the case.