Category / Reports

by Nirupam Biswas

Registering a new car in Telangana RTO in 2023

The dealer takes care of paying the RTO fees and getting a temporary number. Then they tend to handover to an agent for slot booking and getting the permanent registration number. I was asked Rs. 3000 for this. I asked around, some were asked Rs. 1500, etc. fees. I decided to do it on my own as my RTO (Kondapur RTO) was quite near to me.

Slot booking

  1. Goto https://tgtransport.net/TGCFSTONLINE/OnlineTransactions/RegSlot.aspx
  2. Enter the requested details. On entering the OTP, applicant’s details will be shown below. Submit the page to book the slot. No fees will be charged.
  3. Take a print out of the slot booking confirmation.
  4. From the dealer do collect the following documents. They usually give that to the agent, so do ask for them and positively collect it from them.
    • Form 20 (2 copies)
    • Form 21
    • Form 22 (This is provided by the car manufacturer. Do not loose this as getting a duplicate of this will be very very difficult and I was told it could take months.)
    • Insurance Certificate
    • Invoice from Dealer (You might get 2 copies of this as well. Keep one copy with you.)
    • Life Tax Receipt
    • Temporary registration certificate
    • Car price sheet (Tick the exact car model bought by you. RTO uses this to cross-check the life tax amount.)
  5. Along with the above you will also need.
    • Valid address proof, like Aadhaar card, passport, etc. You must carry their original and a self attested copy.
    • Pan card (Original and self attested copy)
  6. Keep a pen and a pencil with you. (Yes a pencil too. Must have.)
  7. Ask your dealer or check online to figure out where your car’s stamped VIN is located. It should be etched on some metal, not merely printed.

Visit the RTO

  1. On your chosen day visit the RTO. You would have chosen a date and time. Ignore the time and just go early as it is going to take quite a while. And do take your car which is to be registered along with you.
  2. Park the car and goto counter where the new vehicle registration documents are submitted. Ask around for that. Usually there will be a board on that counter which would announce that and a list of documents to bring. In our case only four – five people were in the line and the agents were using the back door, carrying with them a thick bundle of documents of various clients. It took around 20mins here since for each person all the aforementioned documents has to be cross-checked by the RTO officer. After successfully completing this step he will hand over a small slip with application number and the fees collected. For us, weirdly it mentioned a slew of different fees on it and at the end said, money collected is zero. And surely no actual money was collected!
  3. Next is getting your picture clicked for the RC and specimen signature. This was a huuu…ge line. We thought easily it would take one or two hours. Fortunately, in my case, it was my wife’s car and for ladies there was a separate line of only two people. We were done in five minutes.
  4. Next and final is locate the hut where policemen are seated and get the car inspected by them. On both copies of Form 20’s end you will need to trace the car’s VIN number using the pencil (video). Be careful to not tear the forms in the process or move the form so much that the trace is illegible. Take the traced forms to policeman, who will verify the VIN and you are done.

Checking for status online

Periodically check on https://tgtransport.net/TGCFSTONLINE/reports/applicationstatussearch.aspx. It could take a while to be updated. It will provide details like when the application gets approved, RC gets printed and dispatched. It will also provide the India Post tracking number. The provided India Post tracking number may not work for few days after the dispatch date. Your RC will arrive at your home address, but the number plate will goto the showroom. The dealer will install that at the showroom.

I did not receive any SMS updates and the number plates arrived before the RC. You can use M-Wallet app to virtually download your RC.

Agent v/s Own

TimeCost
Via Agent5mins (on 1st window) + 5mins-120mins (on second window. You will have to get in line here) + 15mins (the policeman will come to you and the agent may or may not help you to get the trace) = 25mins-140minsRs. 1500 -Rs. 3000
Own20mins + 5-120mins + 15mins (you goto the policeman and since 90% people take help of agents, so this person will usually be sitting all alone :P) = 40mins-155minsZero

Take your pick!

by Nirupam Biswas

Facebook’s evil Free Basics

It is hard to appreciate the evil in FB’s “Free Basic”. The simple facts.

If and when “Free Basics” becomes very popular, which in all likelihood it will, if government does not ban it, then people will mostly probably stop renewing their mobile data plans. That means they will be able to access only “basic” sites when on the go. If tomorrow a startup creates a competing social network – Coolbook, there is no chance, no matter how good it is, Facebook will allow it on its “Free Basics”. So that means a lot and lot of users who are now already used to “Free Basics” will rarely access that site, causing it to shutdown due to poor response, even if few people like us want to use it.

So, if majority supports “Free Basics” we are basically screwed since that will make Mark and FB to become our country’s internet gatekeeper; even if the minority does not like it. This is such an evil but genius scheme.

However, there is still slim sign of hope. In India we are very demanding customers, even when freeloading. When “Free Basics” takes off people are going to use it real heavily, and due to the sheer volume it will inevitably result into slowdown, and public outcry, giving it the much needed negative publicity.

Needless to say, all and everyone should oppose this. Do not bank on the small hope. Take action and goto savetheinternet.in.

by Nirupam Biswas

Relief Trust India review – It’s a Scam!

I should admit that I donated to them once after a preliminary cross-check. However, it seems I still got fooled. After that they started calling me at any time for more donations, and tried to use their “pressure” tactics. I requested them many times not to call me, but just send me an email. However, they continue to ignore this and call me up at odd hours (sometimes). Anyway some more Googling brought me to this post. This post looks genuine enough, if you read its long comments section.

Sting Operation – Relief Trust India review – It’s a Scam! – Complete review and analysis with proofs!.

by Nirupam Biswas

ADF: EntityImpl.refresh(…) has no effect

Many times we use entity.refresh(REFRESH_FORGET_NEW_ROWS | REFRESH_UNDO_CHANGES) to prevent any changes we made to that entity from getting committed to the DB. What the refresh() method effectively does is change the post state of the entity. (See difference between entity-state and post-state.) The post-state is later used to decided which DML operation to use for the entity, i.e. DML_DELETE, DML_INSERT or DML_UPDATE (ref).

I recently came across a code which called refresh() from the entity’s prepareForDML() but that had no effect. ADF documentation says nothing about such a behaviour. I read the EntityImpl code and got my answer there. When we are saving data to DB the call chain is like – transaction.postChanges() -> entity.postChanges() -> entity.prepareForDML() -> entity.doDML().

prepareForDML() and doDML() have first argument operation; this is the DML operation to undertake. The code to decide which DML operation to perform based on entity’s post-state is in EntityImpl.postChanges(). That method invokes prepareForDML() method with the DML operation to undertake. Changing post-state from prepareForDML() or doDML() is useless. So, post-state needs to be set no later than postChanges(). However, if you do need to do this from prepareForDML() or doDML() then you could modify the operation param’s value appropriately.