Pay nearly half the price of your car for its registration number? It sounds quite incredible, but this actually happened in Chandigarh!
Driven by passion, Narinder Singh Shergill, a Punjab farmer, bid Rs 10 lakhs to get his favourite registration number 0001 for a new Toyota Fortuner which he bought for nearly Rs 20 lakhs.
Mr Shergill, who owns farms near Kharar and Kurali towns and is also in the real estate business, had made highest bid for number CHO1 AC 0001 during the auction of the new series of numbers at the Registration and Licensing Authority office here on Saturday.
This was the highest-ever bid for 0001: the highest price that this number fetched in previous auctions was Rs 5.5 lakhs.
“It was my dream to get the 0001 number for my car, and I am very happy I finally got it,” Mr Shergill said on Sunday.
The auction for 0001 started from Rs 25,000 with seven bidders.
After reaching Rs 7,50,000, only two bidders were left in the race. In total, the Registration and Licensing Authority auctioned over 50 registration numbers, earning Rs 39.63 lakhs.
The second and third highest bids were for 0009 and 0003, that went for Rs 4.70 lakhs and Rs 2.50 lakhs respectively.
Mr Narinder Singh Shergill’s wife, a government schoolteacher, was, however, not happy about the huge bid by her husband.