DMT's Dec 1 Crackdown on Open-Papers Sales — Finally Fixing a Bad Habit?

From December 1, the DMT says it will strictly enforce a rule that's existed for years but rarely gets enforced: sell your vehicle and you have 14 days to hand in the MT6 form, revenue licence and CR copies, or face a penalty that effectively doubles the transfer fee. For decades, countless deals here have been done on 'open papers' — buyer pays, drives off, and the registered owner never actually changes because it's faster, cheaper, or the buyer wants to dodge some hassle at the counter. Sellers who go along with it carry real risk: that vehicle stays legally theirs until the transfer is done, so if it's in an accident or ends up in something illegal, their name is still on it. Buyers like open papers because it skips a trip to the DMT and sometimes avoids revenue licence headaches on an older vehicle. Is this crackdown overdue protection for sellers, or just another rule that's hard to enforce when DMT counters are already overloaded and appointments are booked weeks out? If you've bought or sold on open papers, what actually happened — did anyone ever come looking for the old owner? ඔයාලා විකුණපු රථයක papers transfer කරලා තියෙනවද, නැත්නම් open papers ම තියෙනවද?