Use tinted glass, lose insurance cover

Actress Kangana Ranaut campaigns in Delhi against the use of tinted glass in cars 

New Delhi, April 23: If you have vehicles with tinted glass, then be ready to let go of your insurance claim.

According to a government proposal to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, tinted glass or solar films in vehicles would be considered a violation of the warranty conditions in the insurance policy.

The proposal from the ministry of road transport also says that an insurance company can deny a claim if a vehicle with tinted glass is involved in an accident.

Road transport minister C.P. Joshi, in a letter to all chief ministers in March, asked them to start a drive against tinted glass in their respective states. “All of us have been watching with deep concern and anguish the repeated incidents of crimes against women in vehicles, most of which had tinted glasses or solar films,” he wrote.

The letter comes in the aftermath of the December 16 gang rape, in which a paramedical student was brutalised in a moving bus that had tinted windows.

“Registration of vehicles, which continue to violate the rules notwithstanding the suspension of registration, may be cancelled,” Joshi wrote.

He also told the states that issuing challans to offenders was not a solution to the problem of tinted glass.

“Whenever a vehicle with tinted glass is found (to be) involved in a crime, or causes damage to another vehicle or bodily harm to a third party, the vehicle must be impounded by the law enforcement authorities of the states and maximum penalty provided for in the MV (Motor Vehicles) Act must be imposed on the offending vehicle owner,” Joshi wrote.

So far, an attempt to apprehend repeat offenders has failed because of lack of infrastructure.

“Ideally, all officers of the traffic police should be equipped with a handheld device which when fed with the offending vehicle’s registration number, should reveal data on its past challans (or offences). But none of the state traffic police can afford such devices,” said a transport official.

The ministry has now conceived another way to track down repeat offenders.

Since data related to offences are computerised in most of the states, an officer will only have to send a text message with the offending car’s registration number to the National Informatics Centre. The NIC will send information related to the past offences of the vehicle to the mobile number from where the query came.