Fiscal Nepal
First Business News Portal in English from Nepal
KATHMANDU: The Supreme Court has issued an interim order prohibiting the use of the English language on embossed vehicle number plates, halting the government’s implementation of the existing policy.
The joint bench of Justices Kumar Regmi and Mahesh Sharma Poudel delivered the order in response to a writ petition challenging the language provision.
With the interim order in place, the practice of replacing Devanagari script with English-only inscriptions on embossed number plates cannot be enforced for now. The court has directed the concerned authorities to maintain the status quo, bringing the legal validity of the number plate language policy under judicial scrutiny once again.
Advocate Ram Bahadur Raut Matridas had filed the writ petition, naming the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, the Department of Transport Management under the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Transport of Lumbini Province, related transport offices, and Decatur Tiger Nepal—the company involved in supplying embossed number plates—as defendants.
Earlier, on Chaitra 22, 2079 BS (April 5, 2023 AD), the government had decided to amend the law to allow the use of both Nepali and English languages on embossed number plates. A Cabinet meeting at the time resolved to revise Schedule–2 of the Vehicle and Transport Management Act, 2049 (1993) to implement the bilingual provision.
Following that amendment, a policy framework was introduced permitting the use of English alongside Nepali on embossed plates. However, the Supreme Court’s interim order has now suspended the practical enforcement of that decision, placing the matter back into the arena of constitutional and legal review.
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