Centre says renewal of vehicle fitness certificates to be valid for up to 2 years

In key amendments to its Central Motor Vehicle Rules, the government has said that the fitness renewal certificates will be valid for two years for up to eight-year-old vehicles and one year for older vehicles under certain conditions. Besides commercial light motor vehicles (LMVs), the rules are applicable to heavy and medium carriers of goods or passengers. The development is in line with the government’s plan to make fitness testing of expired vehicles mandatory in a phased manner.

In an official notification, on Tuesday, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said the mandatory fitness tests would be carried out only at registered automated testing stations (ATS) under applicable laws. It also said that it would be mandatory for such vehicles to undergo fitness tests at the registered and operational testing station in the jurisdiction of a registering authority, once the new norms come into force. 

Earlier, the government set a deadline of October 1, 2024, for owners of such vehicles to comply with mandatory fitness testing norms. 

The norms, formally called the Central Motor Vehicles (Fifth Amendment) Rules, 2023, make it compulsory for the fitness of vehicles to be tested at the time of registration renewal.
A fitness certificate (FC) is a document that certifies that the vehicle is fit enough in all aspects to ply on roads. A new vehicle comes with a fitness certificate valid for a certain number of years, but one needs to renew it to comply with the rules in order to use the vehicle past its original validity period.