In this Kolhapur village, a fancy vehicle number serves as a family signature

Shivtej Shankar Yadav, his brother and father own eight vehicles, including six motorcycles, one scooter and one car. But what really catches the eye is not the number of vehicles but the number on each of them: 0554. “That’s our family number. We chose this because the initials of all three of us are SSY and 554 if written in a certain manner looks like SSY,” says Yadav (27), whose family runs a furniture workshop.

His neighbour across the road, Sajrao Salunke, owns a hair cutting salon. Three two-wheelers stand outside his home, each bearing the number 1314. “It adds up to 9, and 9 is our lucky number,” says Salunke.

A line of vehicles is parked outside the double-storeyed home of the Sampatrao Dalvi family, which is into farming. Twenty-five people in this joint household ride 11 vehicles, including a car and an EV scooter, all with the number 8282. “It was chosen for the rhythm, ‘byanshee byanshee’ (82 in Marathi),” says Sampatrao, the 72-year-old patriarch.

Welcome to Prayag Chikhali, a village in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, where a fancy number plate is not an exception but a must. For over three decades, a majority of the 1,900-odd households in this village of about 10,000 have ensured a special registration number for their vehicles.

“When we see someone on a two-wheeler or in a car, we look at the number plate and know to which family he or she belongs. If the number plate is 8282, it’s the Dalvi family, if it’s 5151 then it’s Rajput, or if it’s 7777 it’s the family of Pandurang Yadav,” says Baburao Patil (45), who owns a jaggery business and whose four two-wheelers bear the number 7000. Why? “Lucky 7, of course,” he says.

According to local residents, the trend was started by Pandurang Yadav, a local farmer and politician, and neighbour of singer Suresh Wadkar who also hails from Chikhali. Yadav took the number 7777 for his first vehicle in 1990, and did the same for every vehicle he owned. Soon neighbours followed suit, and today “close to 75 per cent” of the residents have adopted the trend, says sarpanch Rohit Patil.

“Our village is now known for its special numbers,” says Patil (33), who calls these “branded numbers” and whose three vehicles all bear 3500. “My grandfather chose this number 30 years ago, my father followed and now I do. It’s our family’s identity and lucky number,” says Patil, who works as a clerk at Kolhapur’s famous Gokul Dairy.

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“The practice here now is to first book the desired number with the RTO and only once that is obtained is the vehicle bought and brought home. The village probably has close to 3,000-4,000 vehicles,” he says.

Special or “VIP” numbers are usually a luxury given the extra fee. At Chikhali, residents seem willing to bear the expense however modest their means. “People here spend anything from Rs 5,000 to Rs 50,000 to get the number of their choice. It’s an expense they factor in while going in for a new vehicle,” says Patil, the sarpanch.

The Kolhapur Regional Transport Office regularly holds auctions for special numbers given the deluge of applications. “We opened a new series for cars yesterday and on the first day itself received some 345 applications for special numbers. For two-wheelers, the applications are much more. We do not have data only for Prayag Chikhali, but we are aware of the practice there,” says Manoj Gajannan Otari, Deputy Regional Transport Officer (RTO).

Many numbers from 1 to 90 have more than one applicant, says Otari. When that happens, the transport office invites Demand Drafts, allotting the number to the highest bidder. “We open the DD envelope in front of all of them for the sake of transparency,” he says, adding that auctions are more frequent during Dussehra and Diwali as more series are announced.

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“Sometimes, we get as many as 12,000 applications for two-wheeler numbers in new series and auctions can go up to three hours… Since registrations in Kolhapur start with MH09, numbers that have 9 or add up to 9 are very popular here,” he says, recounting an incident where a bidder paid Rs 1.5 lakh for the number 1008 for a motorcycle that cost far less.

Sanjeev Bhor, RTO, says that “in cities, people opt for special numbers like 1 or 1000”. “In Pune, I know of an incident when four people wanted 1212 that follows the Pune series MH12 even though it was priced at Rs 3 lakh. But here, it’s the family number that the residents opt for. It’s like following a tradition that has now also become a trend and even a status symbol,” he says.

The residents of Prayag Chikhali have now moved a step further. All those with special vehicle numbers have also started taking mobile numbers ending with the same four digits. “My vehicles have the number 3500, so my mobile also ends with 3500 now,” says Patil, the sarpanch.