On March 1, 2026, the Madhya Pradesh Police Headquarters (PHQ) issued a state-wide order: a 15-day special campaign targeting private vehicles fitted with illegal hooters, VIP sirens, flashing lights (red, yellow, blue), VIP stickers, and non-standard number plates. Compliance reports are due to the PHQ by March 18. Officers in Bhopal hit the roads immediately — by March 6 alone, 30 vehicles had been stopped and hooters removed in the city.
The campaign sounds decisive. The numbers look satisfying in a compliance report. And by March 15, officers will file paperwork, SPs will send emails, and the PHQ will declare the drive a success.
Then, sometime in April, the sirens will go back on the cars.
This is not cynicism. This is the documented, repeating history of VIP hooter enforcement in Madhya Pradesh — and across India. The ban has been in place for nearly a decade. The shops selling sirens operate openly, including online. The violators are often the very people whose names are on government orders. And the cycle begins again.
From Lal Batti to Hooter: How VIP Culture Simply Changed Its Costume
The story begins in May 2017. The Union Government, under PM Narendra Modi, announced one of the more genuinely popular decisions of his first term: an effective ban on the use of red beacon lights (lal batti) by VIPs — including ministers, politicians, bureaucrats, and even, symbolically, the President and Chief Justice of India. The red beacon had become an almost universally despised symbol of entitlement, used to bully ordinary commuters off roads.
The ban was celebrated. Photographs circulated of ministers removing the red lights from their vehicles. The "new India" of the common man had arrived.
Except it hadn't. Within weeks of the lal batti ban, something else appeared on the cars of the political class: hooters, sirens, and flashing lights in yellow and blue. As one analysis noted, the red beacon was gone — the entitlement was very much present.
In Madhya Pradesh specifically, even as the then-CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan publicly removed his own red beacon, several politicians of the ruling BJP planted hooters on their cars as the new VIP symbol. The Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR) do not permit the use of sirens or hooters by private vehicles. Section 119 of the CMVR restricts such devices to ambulances, fire brigades, construction equipment, and police vehicles. Yet by 2017 the hooter had become the lal batti's successor — louder, arguably more aggressive, and just as illegal.
The PHQ Order, the Police Campaign, and What It Found
The March 1, 2026 PHQ order was not the first attempt to address this. It was preceded by an identical circular in March 2025, which launched a 15-day campaign then too. The results were the same: action taken, hooters removed, reports filed, followed by gradual return to business as usual.
What makes the 2026 campaign notable is the specific language of the PHQ notice, which ordered action against four categories of violation in private vehicles: hooters and sirens, flashing lights (red, yellow, and blue), VIP stickers and nameplates, and incorrect or non-standard number plates.
Traffic ACP Ajay Vajpayee told ANI that officers are acting against all violators except those specifically permitted under the Motor Vehicle Act — which includes only VVIP security escort vehicles, fire brigade, ambulances, police vehicles on duty, and executive magistrates. "The rest of the private vehicles do not have permission," he stated plainly.
On paper, this is an airtight rule. In practice, its application has been riddled with exception-making, selective enforcement, and political pressure.
The most embarrassing illustration of this came from Indore itself, at an earlier point: BJP Lok Sabha MP Shankar Lalwani's Toyota Innova Crysta was caught at Kevalram crossing fitted with a hooter, flasher, and an extended nameplate reading "Sansad Indore." The police put a wheel lock on the vehicle. When the MP allegedly returned and saw the lock, he reportedly fled the scene on the pillion of a BJP worker's motorcycle — leaving his driver to pay the fine. Lalwani later denied being present. The hooter, it is reasonable to assume, went back on the car.
The High Court Steps In — and Finds the Police in the Dock
By mid-2025, the gap between official policy and street reality had become so glaring that it found its way to the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Former corporator and social activist Mahesh Garg filed a PIL, supported by advocates Manish Yadav and Aditi Manish Yadav, alleging that despite the March 2025 circular, enforcement across Indore and other districts remained "ineffectual and sporadic."
The petition contained a particularly damaging piece of evidence: photographs showing police officials themselves using illegal hooters and siren devices on their private vehicles.
A division bench comprising Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Binod Kumar Dwivedi issued an interim order that went further than any administrative circular: it directed the RTO and Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) to crack down on all violations, granted private vehicle owners one week to voluntarily remove illegal accessories, and issued notices to the Principal Secretary (Home), DGP, Indore Police Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Transport Commissioner, and RTO.
The court observed that "rampant violations compromise safety and public trust, and that inadequate enforcement amounted to administrative negligence." It also made clear: no MLA, mayor, or police officer is above this law.
The notices required responses within four weeks. The question of whether anything has fundamentally changed since that order is answered, in part, by the fact that the PHQ felt the need to issue yet another 15-day campaign circular in March 2026.
The Supply Chain No One Is Targeting: Shops That Openly Sell Sirens
Here is the structural absurdity at the heart of every VIP hooter crackdown: the devices being seized from vehicles on Tuesday can be purchased from a shop on Wednesday.
A basic search on IndiaMART, Flipkart, or any automobile accessories market in Bhopal, Indore, or any Indian city will surface multiple listings for "VIP car hooters," "police-tone sirens," "7-tone loud hooters with mic," and "200-watt siren with remote." Prices range from ₹1,999 on Flipkart to ₹3,800 on IndiaMART. Some listings prominently use the word "VIP" in the product title — as a selling point, not a warning.
The Dainik Bhaskar reporting on the current MP crackdown highlights exactly this bypass: while police are removing hooters from vehicles on city roads, the shops selling these same hooters continue operating without restriction, consequence, or even acknowledgement from enforcement agencies. The supply side of the VIP siren market is entirely untouched.
This is the fundamental design flaw in every hooter crackdown ever run in India. It targets the symptom — the hooter on the car — without touching the cause — the legal sale of a product that has no legal use case for 99% of its buyers. No private citizen has a legitimate reason to own a police-tone VIP siren. The product exists almost entirely to serve the VIP culture that successive governments claim to be fighting.
A genuine crackdown would involve the state directing the Transport Department or Commerce Ministry to treat the retail sale of non-standard sirens and hooters as a controlled activity — requiring licences, buyer verification, or outright bans on consumer-facing sale. Until that happens, every 15-day campaign is a performance with a predetermined conclusion.
The Noise Pollution Dimension: A Public Health Issue Being Ignored
The VIP hooter debate is usually framed as an issue of entitlement and road safety. But it is also, more fundamentally, a public health issue.
India's Motor Vehicles Act permits the use of horns as a signalling device. It does not permit the sustained, high-decibel wail of a police-grade siren as a means of asserting social dominance. The noise levels produced by 100-watt and 200-watt VIP hooters far exceed safe urban noise exposure limits. Research on noise pollution in Indian cities consistently identifies vehicular noise — including horns and sirens — as a leading contributor to hypertension, sleep disorders, and hearing loss, particularly among traffic police officers and pedestrians.
Every time a VIP convoy uses a siren to bully morning commuters off a road, it is not just an assertion of social inequality. It is a measurable dose of noise pollution inflicted on everyone in its path — auto-rickshaw drivers, school children in buses, patients in nearby hospitals, and pedestrians who cannot get out of the way fast enough.
The PIL in the MP High Court was correctly filed under Articles 14 (equality before law) and 21 (right to life) of the Constitution. The right to move freely on public roads without being subjected to illegal noise and the implied threat of a VIP vehicle bearing down on you is, legally and practically, a fundamental right.
What a Real Crackdown Would Look Like
Nine years after the lal batti ban, India's VIP culture has not ended — it has been rebranded. The hooter is the lal batti for a post-2017 era. To actually end this, the following would need to happen simultaneously:
1. Regulate the sale of sirens and hooters. Require commercial buyers to produce vehicle registration documents proving eligibility. Ban consumer-facing retail of police-grade siren devices online and in auto accessory shops.
2. Make the fine proportionate to the vehicle. The current penalty of ₹5,000 is effectively a parking ticket for the political class. A percentage-of-vehicle-value fine — or license suspension — would change the calculus.
3. Hold the registered owner, not just the driver. When a challan is issued and the driver pays, the registered owner faces no consequence. The Motor Vehicles Act should be amended to ensure that VIP siren violations are registered against the vehicle owner — who in most cases is the politician or official who ordered the hooter installed.
4. Publish compliance data. Every 15-day campaign should be followed by a public report: how many vehicles were found in violation, what category of owner they belonged to (politician, bureaucrat, contractor, private citizen), and what action was taken beyond challan payment.
5. Name the shops. The ongoing Bhopal and Indore crackdowns should be accompanied by a list of shops and online sellers supplying illegal hooters to the market. The supply chain is not invisible.
Key Takeaways
- MP Police launched a 15-day hooter/siren crackdown from March 1–15, 2026; compliance reports due March 18 to the PHQ.
- By March 6, Bhopal traffic police had removed hooters from 30 vehicles; numbers were expected to rise on March 7.
- Only VVIP security escorts, fire brigade, ambulances, police vehicles on duty, and executive magistrates are legally permitted to use hooters under the Motor Vehicle Act.
- The MP High Court, in August 2025, ordered hooter and siren removal within 7 days from all private vehicles — including those of MLAs, mayors, and police officers — after a PIL revealed police officials themselves were violating the rule.
- Shops and online platforms continue to openly sell VIP hooters starting at ₹1,999 — the Bhaskar report's central finding — entirely bypassing the enforcement campaign.
- The hooter replaced the red beacon (banned May 2017) as India's dominant symbol of VIP entitlement.
- Former corporator Mahesh Garg's PIL to the MP High Court found that "inadequate enforcement amounted to administrative negligence."
- No supply-side action — against retailers or online sellers of VIP-grade siren equipment — has been announced alongside the crackdown.
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