ISLAMABAD, March 16: The registration of some 25,000 vehicles that were being driven on open transfer letters, contributed Rs20m to the public exchequer in the past few months, according to official sources.

The sources told this scribe that these vehicles were often used in crimes.

The concerned officials were hopeful that the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration’s on-going campaign to register these vehicles would generate more income for the government as, they believed, several hundred vehicles were still being driven on open transfer letters in Islamabad.

It was also learnt that some 400,000 drivers and owners of vehicles, booked for violations of traffic laws in the past 20 years in Islamabad, never turned up before the concerned magistrate to get warned or fined.

The situation is believed to have caused a big loss to the public exchequer.

According to the record available at district courts, the concerned authorities did not take any action on the lack of compliance with challans.

Honorary Magistrate ICT Bashir Ali however claims to have taken some steps to resolve the problem to some extent.

He told this scribe that he had written some 1,300 letters to those who had been booked for traffic violations in the ICT during the year 2001 but never appeared before the concerned magistrate.