What do the first two letters on an Indian number plate mean?

They are the state or union territory where the vehicle was registered. MH is Maharashtra, DL is Delhi, KA is Karnataka, TN is Tamil Nadu, UP is Uttar Pradesh, WB is West Bengal. There are roughly 36 codes covering 28 states and 8 union territories.

What do the two numbers after the state code mean?

They identify the RTO district that issued the registration — the regional transport office. MH 01 is South Mumbai, MH 12 is Pune, KA 01 is central Bengaluru, DL 03 is one of the Delhi zones. If you can read those digits you have narrowed a state down to a city.

What do the different number plate colours mean in India?

White background with black text is a private vehicle. Yellow background with black text is commercial — taxis, autorickshaws, trucks and buses. Green is an electric vehicle, with white text for private and yellow text for commercial. Blue with white text is a foreign diplomatic mission. Black with yellow text is a self-drive rental. Red is a temporary registration, or an official state vehicle when it carries the national emblem instead of numbers.

What is a BH series number plate?

BH is the Bharat series, a national registration introduced for people who move between states for work — defence, central government and larger private employers. It deliberately carries no state code, so a BH plate rules out using that vehicle as a location clue entirely.

Are Indian number plates reliable for guessing location in a geography game?

They are the strongest single clue available, but only on local vehicles. Autorickshaws, two-wheelers, parked private cars and city buses are almost always registered nearby. Long-haul lorries and interstate coaches routinely carry plates from the far side of the country, so a single truck plate should never decide a round.

Indian Number Plate Codes by State — and What the Colours Mean

Every Indian registration plate opens with a two-letter state code and a district number. Here is the full table, the colour system, and why a plate on a truck is worth almost nothing.

There is a parked scooter in most Indian Street View frames. It has a small rectangle on the back with two letters on it, and those two letters name a state.

Nothing else in an ordinary Indian frame does that. Script narrows you to a region. Landscape narrows you to a climate. A plate code tells you the answer.

How to read the plate

The standard format is four parts:

Two letters: The state or union territory of registration. This is the read that matters.
Two digits: The RTO district inside that state. Narrows a state to a city or a district.
One to three letters: The issuing series. No location information.
Four digits: The vehicle number. No location information.

So MH 12 AB 1234 is Pune in Maharashtra, and KA 03 MN 4567 is Bengaluru in Karnataka. Even a badly compressed plate usually gives up the first two characters, because they are the leftmost and the largest thing you can lock onto.

If you can read two characters on one plate, read them. It is the highest-value second in an Indian round.

The state codes

The 28 states:

Code	State	Code	State
AP	Andhra Pradesh	MN	Manipur
AR	Arunachal Pradesh	ML	Meghalaya
AS	Assam	MZ	Mizoram
BR	Bihar	NL	Nagaland
CG	Chhattisgarh	OD	Odisha
GA	Goa	PB	Punjab
GJ	Gujarat	RJ	Rajasthan
HR	Haryana	SK	Sikkim
HP	Himachal Pradesh	TN	Tamil Nadu
JH	Jharkhand	TS	Telangana
KA	Karnataka	TR	Tripura
KL	Kerala	UK	Uttarakhand
MP	Madhya Pradesh	UP	Uttar Pradesh
MH	Maharashtra	WB	West Bengal

The union territories:

Code	Union territory
AN	Andaman & Nicobar Islands
CH	Chandigarh
DD	Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu
DL	Delhi
JK	Jammu & Kashmir
LA	Ladakh
LD	Lakshadweep
PY	Puducherry

The colour system

Plate colour in India encodes what the vehicle is for, not where it is. That is still useful — it tells you whether the plate in front of you is a local vehicle worth trusting or a commercial one that may have driven a very long way.

Background	Text	Meaning	Trust as a location clue
White	Black	Private vehicle	High — usually local
Yellow	Black	Commercial: taxi, auto, bus, truck	Depends entirely on the vehicle
Green	White	Private electric vehicle	High, and implies a larger city
Green	Yellow	Commercial electric vehicle	High — EV fleets are city-bound
Black	Yellow	Self-drive rental	Medium — rentals do travel
Blue	White	Foreign diplomatic mission	Very high — effectively means Delhi
Red	White	Temporary registration, or official	Low — often unregistered and new

Which vehicle to trust

This is where players throw rounds away. A plate is evidence about a vehicle, and vehicles move.

Autorickshaws — permitted to operate in a defined local area. Close to perfect evidence.
Two-wheelers — scooters and commuter motorcycles rarely leave their district. Excellent.
Parked private cars on a residential street. Excellent.
City and state transport buses — the corporation is regional and the bus is on a route. Very good.
Taxis and rentals — good within a state, less so between them.
Long-haul trucks — routinely 1000 to 2000 km from home. Nearly worthless.

Two scooters agreeing beats one lorry, every time.

When the plate is unreadable

Street View blurs plates in many places and the compression finishes the job in others. You are not stuck.

The background colour survives blurring and still separates private from commercial.
Plate shape and mounting differ between two-wheelers, autos and cars, which tells you what kind of vehicle you are being given evidence about.
Commercial vehicles carry painted text on the body — operator names, route boards, permit markings — which is often more legible than the plate and frequently names a town outright.
A state transport bus carries its corporation on the flank. That is a state-level read that does not need the plate at all.

When plates fail entirely, fall back to the script on the signage and the milestone colours.

Indian number plate codes by state, and what the colours mean

The short version