The Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 · Ch. XIII — OFFENCES, PENALTIES AND PROCEDURE

Section 196 — Driving uninsured vehicle

Whoever drives a motor vehicle or causes or allows a motor vehicle to be driven in contravention of the provisions of section 146 shall be [liable for the first contravention with penalty of three times the base premium for such vehicle specified under sub-section (2) of section 147 or five thousand rupees, whichever is higher, and for a subsequent contravention shall be liable to penalty of five times the base premium for such vehicle as specified under sub-section (2) of section 147 or ten thousand rupees, whichever is higher].

How offences under the MV are classified

Sections of the MV are not classified one by one by any First Schedule. Part II of the First Schedule to the BNSS classifies offences under every other law by the punishment they carry — and the CRPC’s First Schedule sets out the same three bands.

If punishable with death, imprisonment for life, or imprisonment for more than 7 years.

Arrest: Cognizable
Bail: Non-bailable
Triable by: Court of Session

If punishable with imprisonment for 3 years and upwards but not more than 7 years.

Arrest: Cognizable
Bail: Non-bailable
Triable by: Magistrate of the first class

If punishable with imprisonment for less than 3 years or with fine only.

Arrest: Non-cognizable
Bail: Bailable
Triable by: Any Magistrate

Read it against the punishment in the section above. Vidhara does not place a section in a band for you — that turns on the exact wording of its punishment, which is the section’s to say and not ours.

And a special or local law may provide otherwise: see BNSS section 5, which saves any special jurisdiction, power or procedure another law lays down.

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Source & version

Official text: India Code (official) ↗

Official India Code text: The Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 (59 of 1988), English PDF (bitstream A1988-59.pdf, 4,328,659 bytes, sha256 09d232b1…) fetched from indiacode.gov.in on 2026-08-29 via the DSpace 7 REST API (item handle 123456789/619305, CENTRAL community › Acts collection; the portal migrated from indiacode.nic.in and re-issued every handle). This is a NEWER edition than the 2026-07-30 fetch it replaces (3,740,289 bytes): it carries ss. 2A (e-cart and e-rickshaw) and 2B (promotion of innovation), and s. 182B retitled “Penalty for contravention of section 62A”. Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -bbox and the @nexlex/ingest inline parser. Automated parse; footnotes/amendment history excluded; spot-verified; full clause-level proofread pending. Amendment footnotes set at body height were removed before parsing (D-085): the parser's body-height floor is now scaled to the document's own modal type size, per page, so a footnote set smaller than the body reaches the footnote latch instead of the statute text.

How we verify this text →

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