The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed petitions challenging the stringent conditions put by the government in the tender document for bidders to manufacture high security number plates for 80 million vehicles in India.

A bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal, Justice D M Dharmadhikari and Justice Tarun Chatterjee dismissed all the petitions filed by the Association of Registration Plate Manufacturers of India challenging the tender conditions.

The high security number plates were to be implemented from October 1, 2001 but various litigations before the high courts and later the SC had led to postponement of the deadline.

Now the process will start from January 1, 2005 and end by January 2007.

The number plate industry is estimated to be worth around 5,000 crore

The National Democratic Alliance government had come up with the policy decision in regard to these number plates as this is a practice worldwide to prevent theft of vehicles, use of vehicles for terrorism purposes and other illegal activities.

The movement of vehicles having such number plates, which are tamper-proof, can be constantly monitored through electronic gadgets by the licence issuing authority.