Navsari RTO: GJ-21 office, history, and road tax

Navsari has been a district of its own only since 2 October 1997, and its vehicles are registered under GJ-21. The office that issues them is ARTO Navsari, an Assistant Regional Transport Office (ARTO) of the Commissionerate of Transport, Gujarat, not a full Regional Transport Office (RTO).

Split GJ 21 AB 1234 into its four pieces and each has one job. GJ names the state, Gujarat. 21 names the Navsari office. Then come AB, the letter series, and 1234, the four-digit number.

Worth knowing: Your GJ-21 code does not change when you sell the car in Surat or move to Valsad. Wherever in Gujarat you take it, the 21 stays on the plate, and the code changes only if the car is re-registered outside Gujarat or its registration details are changed, as with any car first registered at ARTO Navsari.

Is your GJ-21 car from before April 2019? Then it needs a High Security Registration Plate (HSRP) installed under Rule 50 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989. Cars sold new from 1 April 2019 already came with one.

Worth knowing: Use the booking portal that the Commissionerate of Transport, Gujarat website names to book the HSRP installation for a GJ-21 vehicle, and check the date that applies there. More on the plates is in our Gujarat RTO guide.

Navsari’s code is GJ-21. As the district was only formed in 1997, a Navsari car can be mistaken for a Valsad GJ-15 or a Surat GJ-05 one, but a car registered in Navsari district today gets GJ-21.

Before 1997 the area belonged to Valsad district, from 1964, and before that to Surat district, from 1949, the Navsari district website records. That history is why GJ-15 and GJ-05 are sometimes taken for Navsari codes.

Registration, licences, transfers and road tax for anyone with a Navsari district address all pass through ARTO Navsari. The Commissionerate confirms its name and code, but the published listings do not agree on where it is, so confirm the location first.

ARTO Navsari, GJ-21

Most directories place the office at Italva in Navsari. One listing instead gives an address on Sisodra Road that appears to describe a business opposite the office, so check the exact location with the office before you go.

ARTO Navsari is the office for Navsari district, so a Navsari address would normally be registered under GJ-21; for an existing vehicle, Vahan shows which office holds it. What decides it is the address on the Registration Certificate (RC), so a Navsari resident who buys a car in Surat is still a GJ-21 owner.

Not sure where an existing car was registered? Type its number, such as GJ21AB1234, into the finder at the top of this page.

Worth knowing: If you move from Navsari to Surat or Valsad, you keep the GJ-21 plate. What you do need is a fresh address on the RC and a note to inform your insurer where the car now lives.

For a Navsari buyer, a ₹6 lakh car means ₹36,000 of road tax, paid along with the on-road price.

Do assistant offices charge less? No. RTO fees are national, so ARTO Navsari asks the same amounts as RTO Surat or RTO Valsad. Fees are paid through the Vahan portal, and a dealer pays them for you when it registers a new car.

Worked example: A Navsari family financing a new car pays ₹600 in registration fee, ₹200 for the smart card RC and ₹1,500 for the loan entry. Together that comes to ₹2,300 at the RTO, with Gujarat road tax charged separately.

For an ageing GJ-21 car, the registration renewal is ₹5,000 at 15 years and ₹10,000 from 20 years. Missing the date costs ₹500 for each month on a car and ₹300 for each month on a motorcycle.

Buying from a showroom in Surat does not change the code. The dealer files your application on Vahan with your address proof, and a Navsari district address sends it to ARTO Navsari for a GJ-21 number.

With a loan still on the RC (hypothecation), use Form 35 and the bank’s No Objection Certificate (NOC) to remove it before the sale, free of charge. For anything else about selling a GJ-21 car, see our Gujarat RTO guide.

A Navsari owner uses the Vahan portal for anything to do with the vehicle and the Sarathi portal for anything to do with a licence. ARTO Navsari then deals with the application.

Duplicate RC and RC status check in Navsari

A duplicate RC is applied for on Form 26 and costs ₹300 for a car. For a quick look at what the record shows for a GJ-21 number, check your RC status on Kiwi Insurance.

Driving licence services in Navsari

New drivers in Navsari start on Sarathi with the learner’s licence, then book their driving test slot there and sit the test in person. For every other service, see our Gujarat RTO guide.

Under section 196 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, a Navsari driver with no valid insurance on a GJ-21 car is fined ₹2,000 the first time and ₹4,000 for every later offence.

Check and clear a GJ-21 challan for the amount it shows, on echallan.parivahan.gov.in or in the mParivahan app. For other offences, see our Gujarat RTO guide.

Coming from Surat, Valsad or anywhere else in Gujarat, your car keeps its number. Coming from another state, you need a GJ-21 registration once the car has been kept in Gujarat for more than 12 months, which is the rule in section 47 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.

If you are leaving Gujarat instead, reverse the order: ARTO Navsari gives the NOC for the GJ-21 car on Form 28, and the new state then registers it.

Worth knowing: When a car from another state settles in Navsari, the insurer hears from you twice, first with the address and later with the GJ-21 number. Every form for the move is explained in our Gujarat RTO guide.

Expecting to be posted outside Gujarat? A Navsari owner can register under BH instead of GJ-21 if they are defence or government staff, or work for a private company with offices in 4 or more states or union territories and give Form 60 from the employer.

The format is YY BH #### XX, where YY is the year of first registration, the four digits are allotted at random, and XX represents the alphabetic series, which can be a single letter or two letters. It is black on a white plate, like any other private car.

A BH car pays tax every 2 years in place of Gujarat’s single charge, and needs no No Objection Certificate (NOC) when it changes state. Our Gujarat RTO guide gives the rates.

Before you submit: Each service’s document list is on the Parivahan Sewa website, which also hosts the other RTO forms.