India license plate: Bharat (BH)

Format, years and the law

Format

99 BH 9999 LL, for example 22 BH 1234 AB (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

The first two digits are the year of first registration, the only Indian plate that wears its age, then BH for Bharat: valid nationwide, no State, no district. The tail is generated randomly; the owner cannot choose it.

BH

Bharat (India, nationwide validity)

The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.

Years issued

2021 to today. Still issued.

Vehicle class

Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, and motorcycle.

Colours

Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF

Size

340 × 200 mm · every country's size

• 

  Bharat (BH) 500×120 mm

  standard · 500 × 120 mm

• 

  Bharat (BH) 200×100 mm

  standard · 200 × 100 mm

About this plate

THE BHARAT (BH) SERIES, a genuinely new format, instrument-dated to the day. What the series solves is the § 47 re-registration burden on inter-State movers: rule 54(3), inserted by the same amendment, provides that the re-registration rule "shall not apply to a vehicle having BH-Series registration mark", the owner instead intimating the new State in Form 33 within thirty days. The mark is black on white by rule 50(8) in terms, the sub-rule prescribes the colour itself rather than leaning on rule 50(2)(d), and a transport BH plate does not exist.

Region code notes

THE ONE INDIAN MARK WITH NO GEOGRAPHY IN IT, that is the entire point of the series. There is no state code and no district code; "BH" is Bharat, the country. A parse API must not attempt a regional decode on a BH string, and must not read the leading two digits as a district: they are a year.

How numbers are issued

The first two digits are the last two digits of the YEAR of registration, which makes BH the only Indian series with an exact age in the serial. The trailing letter group advances A..Z then AA..ZZ as each year's four-digit block exhausts. The mark is not chosen: rule 48's new proviso requires it to be "generated randomly through the portal after verification of working certificate in Form 60 or Official identity card".

Who can have one

Rule 47(1)(ca)-(cb), inserted by the same instrument: a working certificate in Form 60 for a private-sector applicant, whose employer declares "we have offices in four States/UTs or more"; an official identity card for a government employee. The series is voluntary ("opted voluntarily by the vehicle owner", rule 48 proviso) and non-transport only, since rule 51B's tax scheme is written for "non-transport vehicles".

Legal basis and sources

1. egazette.gov.in https://egazette.gov.in/WriteReadData/2021/229283.pdf