Bedkot, Sept 24: Vehicles seized in theft, smuggling and various incidents have been kept at Kanchanpur Customs Office Gadda Chauki for the past four years. Due to the delay in auctioning, the vehicles are getting dilapidated at the customs office.
In the past, the auction process could not be expedited due to COVID-19 pandemic. Kanchanpur Customs Office has about 400 two-wheelers and 20 four-wheelers and other vehicles. Police seized the stolen vehicles from various areas of the district–vehicles with Indian and Nepali number plates– and handed them over to the customs office.
Most of the vehicles in the customs office are motorcycles with Indian number plates that have not completed the customs process. Similarly, the Nepali vehicles seized while stealing and importing various goods without paying the customs duty have also been kept in the warehouse of the customs office.
Vehicles worth billions of rupees gather dust as govt fails to...
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Earlier, in the year 2018, the customs office had recovered nearly Rs 40 million. According to Dhuvraraj Bishwakarma, Chief Customs Officer of Kanchanpur Customs Office, the vehicles will be auctioned after Dashain and Tihar.
"The traffic engineer has seen all the vehicles, the report is being prepared", he said, "After receiving the report, the evaluation committee is ready to issue the auction notice after determining the price."
“In the past, there were delays in vehicle auctions due to various reasons including COVID-19, but this will not happen now,” he claimed.
“Due to the lack of staff, we asked the department for more staff in January 2019 for the auction, after that we looked at the chassis and engine of the vehicle,” Customs officer Bishwakarma said. “When the auction is delayed, the price is delayed. We do not want this to happen this year. The auction will be in one or two months.”
