Your car and bike papers, and what a lapse actually costs.

The two it is actually illegal to be without

Third-party insurance

Every vehicle on a public road in India must carry at least third-party cover. Not comprehensive — third-party is the legal minimum, and it is the part that pays the other person when you are at fault.

Under section 196 of the Motor Vehicles Act, as amended in 2019, driving without it is a fine of ₹2,000 for a first offence and ₹4,000 for a subsequent one, each carrying up to three months' imprisonment. The vehicle can be detained until you produce valid cover.

The part people miss: this applies to a vehicle on a public road, including one parked on it. A car sitting outside your building with a lapsed policy is not exempt because it is not moving.

PUC certificate

The Pollution Under Control certificate is the cheapest document on this list and carries the largest fine: ₹10,000, or up to six months, or both, under section 190(2). It costs somewhere between ₹60 and ₹150 to renew and takes about ten minutes at any authorised centre.

Validity is usually six months. A brand-new vehicle typically gets one year from the date of registration, after which it drops to the six-month cycle like everything else — which is exactly why the second one catches people out.

The one that costs you quietly: No Claim Bonus

Every claim-free year earns a discount on the own-damage part of your premium — 20% after the first year, rising in steps to 50% after five. On a mid-sized car that is a five-figure difference, and it is the single most valuable thing attached to a policy that nobody thinks about.

You keep it if you renew within 90 days of expiry. Past that, it is gone — all of it, back to zero, and you start the five-year climb again. That is the IRDAI position and every insurer applies it.

Two things about those ninety days that are widely misunderstood:

• It is not a grace period on cover. Your vehicle is uninsured from the minute the policy expires. The ninety days protect the discount, not you. An accident on day three is entirely your bill, and legally you were also committing the section 196 offence above.
• Any renewal after expiry is a "break-in" policy. That means a physical inspection of the vehicle before cover starts, fresh underwriting, and usually a day or more of delay. Renewing the day before expiry avoids all of it.

The practical upshot: treat the expiry date as a hard deadline with a week of runway, not a soft one with three months.

The trap in a new vehicle

Buy a new car and the third-party cover is bundled for three years. Buy a new two-wheeler and it is five. Both are mandated, both are paid up front, and both create the same false impression — that the vehicle is insured until 2029 and there is nothing to think about.

Only the third-party half runs that long. The own-damage cover — the part that pays to repair your vehicle after a crash, a flood or a theft — is almost always written for one year and has to be renewed annually alongside it. Miss it and you are still road-legal, still uninsured for anything that happens to your own vehicle, and unlikely to notice until you need it.

If you bought a new vehicle in the last few years, this is worth checking today rather than at the end of the guide.

Everything with an expiry date

Validity periods vary by state, vehicle class and age. Treat this as a map of what to check, not as the final word on your particular vehicle.

Where to check all of it, free

• parivahan.gov.in — the Ministry's own portal. Enter a registration number and it returns registration date, vehicle class, and the status of insurance, PUC and fitness. Useful for your own vehicle and essential before buying a second-hand one.
• mParivahan and DigiLocker — digital copies of your RC and licence, which the Ministry has confirmed are valid to show at a check. Worth doing once so a forgotten wallet is not a challan.
• The Insurance Information Bureau — if you have genuinely lost track of who insured you, IIB holds a central record of motor policies and can point you back at the insurer.
• Your FASTag issuer's app — the only place re-KYC status actually shows up. It will not appear on Parivahan.

The ten minutes that fixes this

Pull up the four dates that matter — insurance, PUC, licence, FASTag KYC — and write each one down with a reminder some distance ahead of it. Not on the day. Renewing insurance takes a week if it takes a day, and a PUC centre queue is not something you want to discover at 6pm on the expiry date.

Sensible lead times: 30 days for insurance, 15 for PUC, 60 for a licence, and whatever your bank asks for FASTag. Where you write them down does not matter in the slightest — a calendar, a spreadsheet, a diary. The rest of the list is worth the same treatment.