Can a car have two engines?

One car, one engine and one chasis.  That is what we understand from the registration papers.  But in some parts of our country, more than one car have the same engine or the same chasis.  This is what government auditor i.e. CAG of India has detected about the functioning of Transport Authorities in West Bengal.  In its report for the year ended 31st March 2007, CAG had following observations-

Para 5.2.9.1 Duplicate engine and chassis numbers

Alphanumeric chassis and engine numbers assigned by the manufacturer of the vehicles are the unique identification mark of vehicles. The Central Motor Vehicles (CMV) Rules 1989, prescribe that a person while applying for registration of his vehicle shall mention the chassis number and engine number in the application form. The chassis and engine numbers shall not be the same for any two vehicles.

Test check of the registration database of the RTO, Barasat, Hooghly and ARTO, Barrackpore revealed that out of 3,11,864 registration records of vehicles, 1,192 vehicles contained duplicate chassis number and 1,289 vehicles contained duplicate engine number.

The existence of duplicate chassis and engine numbers indicated lack of inbuilt data validation checks at entry level to restrict entry of duplicate chassis or engine numbers. Manual verification could not be conducted due to non-availability of specific records. The possibility of assignment of more than one registration number to the same vehicle cannot be ruled out. After these cases were pointed out, the RTO, Hooghly and ARTO, Barrackpore admitted in March-April 2007 the audit observation and stated that duplicate engine and chassis number is due to lack of inbuilt validation control in the system and wrongful data entry by the private vendors. In addition, due to scarcity of space and manpower, the manual records had not been maintained properly. The RTO, Barasat did not furnish any reply.

And these instances are not rare.  Other state governments are doing the same.  Some of these cases will be published in the coming posts.