Industry Odisha Bureau, Oct 22: Provisional passenger vehicle registrations fell 21.9%, which dealers link to a high base. Carmakers report robust deliveries and bookings, though Maruti says shortages are capping sales.
Passenger vehicle registrations plunged 21.9% this Navratri, The Economic Times reported. Provisional figures put them at 1.83 lakh units between October 11 and 20, 2026. The figures come from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA). It was the sharpest drop among all vehicle categories.
Carmakers tell a different story, reporting strong deliveries and swelling order books. The gap partly reflects different measures, periods and data sources. Registrations log vehicles in the official system, while deliveries mark handovers to buyers. Bookings, meanwhile, are orders that may not yet have turned into sales.
Dealers attribute much of the decline to an unusually strong base last year. Navratri 2025 coincided with the rollout of GST 2.0. Sales had largely stalled for half of August and most of September beforehand. Deferred purchases then crowded into last year’s festival, lifting the comparison base.
This year, buying continued even through Shradh, a period seen as inauspicious. FADA president Sai Giridhar called the dip “largely optical”. He noted that last year’s Navratri lasted 11 days, against ten this year. Neither factor, though, is shown to explain the entire 21.9% fall.
Maruti Suzuki India, the largest carmaker, said Navratri deliveries reached about 98% of last year’s. It said it could have sold more with better supply. Partho Banerjee, its senior executive officer for sales and marketing, said dealers want more cars.
Maruti receives 12,000–12,500 bookings a day but can supply only 8,000–8,500 vehicles. Pending bookings rose to 2.7 lakh after Dussehra from about 2 lakh in early October. Not every booking will necessarily become a sale, but the backlog signals unmet orders.
Separate JATO Dynamics data paints a milder picture for the top carmakers. Their petrol, diesel and CNG car registrations fell 5.2% to 1.69 lakh units. This dataset covers a different set of vehicles from FADA’s figures.
Maruti registered 74,387 cars, up 0.1%, while Mahindra & Mahindra rose 6.6% to 20,681. Tata Motors fell 16.4% to 24,843 units, and Kia slipped 9.3% to 9,731. Hyundai declined 2.7% to 19,706 units. Electric car registrations also fell 5.1% to 11,478 units, JATO said.
Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles nevertheless said demand remained strong. Chief commercial officer Amit Kamat said it delivered over 50,000 vehicles during Navratri. More than 10,000 of those were delivered on Dussehra alone. These are delivery figures, so they cannot be read directly against JATO’s registration count.
Hyundai Motor India said its registrations rose 30% to nearly 41,000 units. That figure spans Shradh and Navratri together, a wider window than JATO’s data. Chief executive Tarun Garg expects momentum to continue through Dhanteras and Diwali.
Dealers caution that the full picture will take a few more days to emerge. The Vahan portal records registrations with a lag, one dealer principal said. Final figures may therefore differ from the provisional numbers. Dhanteras and Diwali sales will offer a clearer test of underlying demand.
