# India license plate: Standard

> The India standard license plate: format LL 99 LL 9999, for example MH 12 AB 1234, 1989 to 2003, car, van, motorcycle, tractor, and machine.

Page: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india/standard-1989 · Markdown version of the HTML page, which is canonical. Site map: https://vehiclesdb.com/llms.txt · Terms of use: https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/terms

Part of [India license plates](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india) (16 registration series).

![India license plate, Standard (1989 to 2003)](https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/in/in-standard-1989/india-license-plate-standard.svg)

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | `LL 99 LL 9999` (L is any letter, 9 any digit) |
| Years | 1989–2003 |
| Class | standard |
| Issued for | car, van, motorcycle, tractor, machine |
| Plate size | 340 × 200 mm |
| Other sizes | 500 × 120 mm: light motor vehicles / passenger cars, the single-line alternative (rule 50(1)(vi)); 200 × 100 mm: two- and three-wheelers, quadricycles, E-rickshaws, E-carts; 285 × 45 mm: agricultural tractor front; power tiller front; also permitted as a motor cycle front plate |
| Colours | background #FFFFFF; characters #000000 |
| Rear plate differs from the front | no |
| Checking a registration | The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued. |
| Series id | `in-standard-1989` (https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india/standard-1989) |

Left to right: two letters for the State or territory (MH is Maharashtra, DL is Delhi), one or two digits for the registering office within it, then a series and a four-digit number. The office codes are each State's own invention — over a thousand, never centrally listed.

Sources:

- [web.archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20250804185944id_/https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/1798/1/aA1988-59.pdf)
- [web.archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20211130113450id_/https://morth.nic.in/sites/default/files/CMVR-chapter3.pdf)
- [web.archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20210514201915id_/https://morth.nic.in/sites/default/files/notifications_document/S.O.%204262%28E%29%20dated%2025%20th%20November%20Registration%20Mark%20for%20Ladakh%20LA.pdf)

## About this plate

In fact non-HSRP plates went on being made in most States for another fifteen years, until the HSRP Order 2018 put the obligation on vehicle manufacturers from 1 April 2019.

## How the region is encoded

TWO GEOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS, ONE CLOSED AND ONE OPEN, AND A PARSE API MUST NOT TREAT THEM ALIKE. (1) The first two letters are the STATE/UT code, a closed list allotted by the Central Government under MVA § 41(6), the decode table. (2) The two digits are the REGISTERING AUTHORITY (RTO DISTRICT) code, which no central instrument enumerates: rule 50(3) simply calls it "registering authority code" and rule 35(3) calls it "RTO Code". A decode may return the State with confidence and the district only against a State-published list of that State's own offices, dated. THIRD ELEMENT, FLAGGED AS UNSOURCED: several States are widely reported to spend the first letter of the series group on a VEHICLE-CLASS code rather than on the series, Delhi's "C" for car in "DL 3C AB 1234" is the famous case. A parse API must not decode a class from it.

## How numbers are issued

The series group advances within a district as its four-digit block exhausts (single letter, then two, then three); the allocation order is an administrative matter for each State's registering authority and is published by none of them uniformly. A series letter therefore gives a LOWER bound on age within a district and nothing stronger.

## Before and after

| Relation | Series | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Replaced by | [Standard HSRP](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india/standard-hsrp-2004) | 2004 to today |

## Other standard plates here

- [Bharat (BH)](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india/bh-2021) (2021 to today)
- [Standard HSRP](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india/standard-hsrp-2004) (2004 to today)
- [Transport HSRP](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india/transport-hsrp-2004) (2004 to today)
- [Transport](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/india/transport-1989) (1989 to 2003)

## Use it

- Plate image (SVG): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/in/in-standard-1989.svg
- Make it with your own text: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plate-generator/india?series=in-standard-1989
- API: `GET https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/in` returns this series as the entry with `"id": "in-standard-1989"` (https://vehiclesdb.com/api)

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Open data, CC BY 4.0: reuse it with a visible credit to VehiclesDB and a link (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/attribution). Plate images show sample serials and are not open data (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/image-license). Dataset commit db0ec0a: https://github.com/vehiclesdb/vehiclesdb