Per km, per day, driver bata: costing a vehicle right

Three transporters quote the same six-day hill circuit. One says ₹16 per km. One says ₹3,200 a day. One says ₹3,500 flat, unlimited local running. You can't put these side by side and pick the cheapest, because they aren't the same number. That's the first mistake in costing a vehicle, and it quietly eats the margin already booked into the client's quote.

A vehicle line in a tour costing sheet is not one figure. It's six: the running rate, the minimum-km-per-day floor that applies even on light days, driver bata, night halt charges, the permit/toll/parking pass-through, and the empty leg the vehicle runs on a one-way drop. Skip any one and the transporter's final bill lands higher than the quote assumed, after the client-facing price is already fixed. This post covers all six, the All India Tourist Permit, and the GST line most operators guess at, ending with a worked table across three quoting models and a vehicle-size comparison at 22 pax.

The three ways transporters actually quote you

A vehicle for a multi-day tour is quoted one of three ways: flat per-km with a minimum-km-per-day floor, a per-day rate with a km cap and an extra-km charge beyond it, or full-day disposal at one flat price with no metering.

Flat per-km with a minimum floor, the default for outstation and hill circuits, guarantees a minimum daily running regardless of distance covered; drive less than the floor and you still pay for it. Per-day with a km cap, more common on city transporters and shorter circuits, covers a set km per day with extra km billed at a steeper rate. Full-day disposal, common for local sightseeing, is one flat price for the day within a fixed radius, no metering, the easiest to budget against and the one transporters resist offering on genuine outstation running.

None of the three headline rates compares directly to another without running the actual km and days through it. A ₹14/km quote with a 300 km/day floor can cost more than a ₹16/km quote with a 200 km/day floor, once a circuit that rarely runs 300 km a day gets multiplied out.

Driver bata means: what it is, and who actually sets the amount

Driver bata is the day allowance paid to the driver for being away from base, covering food and incidentals on the road. It's separate from the vehicle's running cost, paid per day the driver is out, and stacks on top of whichever quoting model applies.

No government body, transport authority or single trade association fixes a bata figure. It's set by local transporter and driver-association norms, and varies by city, season and how remote the circuit runs. Any rupee figure attached to bata here, including in the worked table below, is illustrative, chosen for readable arithmetic, not a market rate to quote back. Ask for the figure per day, in writing, before costing the tour.

Night halt charges: when they apply and how they differ from bata

A night halt charge applies when the driver and vehicle stay overnight away from base, and it's separate from bata, not a substitute for it. Bata covers day-to-day expenses on the road; night halt compensates for the vehicle and driver being parked away from home overnight. The two stack: a six-day circuit with five nights away carries six days of bata plus five nights of halt, billed separately. Ask before costing whether night halt is already folded into the per-day or per-km rate, or billed separately per night; most per-km quotes don't bundle it in. Get the answer in writing, because it's the second most common "surprise" on a final invoice, right after bata itself.

Garage-to-garage vs point-to-point: the km count that changes your bill

Garage-to-garage billing counts every km the vehicle drives from the transporter's garage to pick you up, through the tour, and back. Point-to-point billing counts only the km between your actual pickup and drop points. The difference is the transporter's own dead mileage getting to and from base, and on garage-to-garage billing, that dead mileage lands on your bill.

A garage sitting 40 km outside the city can add roughly 80 km round trip to the billed distance that a point-to-point quote would never count. On a long circuit that's a rounding error; on a short local job it can meaningfully move the economics. Ask directly before costing a rate in: garage-to-garage or point-to-point? If a transporter won't answer clearly, assume garage-to-garage and price accordingly; it's the more common convention for outstation vehicles.

The empty return leg on a one-way drop

A one-way transfer still bills for the vehicle's return trip back to base, empty, under most transporter models, because the vehicle and driver have to get back regardless of a paying passenger. That cost lands on your one-way client, which is why a genuine one-way drop rarely costs half of a round trip.

Example: Say a return airport transfer runs ₹3,200 all-in, both legs included. A one-way drop on the same route, quoted honestly, often lands closer to ₹2,200-₹2,600, not ₹1,600, because the transporter is still paying for the empty leg back.

Absorb the empty leg into the client's one-way price as the cost of offering one-way transfers at all, or negotiate a lower rate with a transporter who runs the reverse route often enough to pick up another fare on the way back. Either way, don't quote a one-way transfer at exactly half the round-trip rate.

All India Tourist Permit rules: what an ATP does, and doesn't, cover

An All India Tourist Permit lets one vehicle ply anywhere in India on a single national permit instead of separate state-by-state permits, but it's a permit-jurisdiction question, not a tax exemption. Permit-heavy circuits like Ladakh's taxi union rates and permit rules carry their own layer on top of this.

Under the All India Tourist Vehicles (Permit) Rules, 2023, an ATP authorises a vehicle to run nationwide on one permit (Madras High Court, K. Jaya v Union of India, 2025), granted for ninety-day multiples up to five years, and cannot be granted once the vehicle has completed twelve years from first registration (Rule 4(5)). That flat cutoff differs from the older Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989, which invalidated a permit at 9 years for a motor cab or 8 for other vehicles unless replaced.

Jurisdiction over an ATP sits exclusively with the Central Government: states cannot apply their own separate permit rules to, or detain, a validly all-India-permitted vehicle (State of Andhra Pradesh v. B. Noorulla Khan, 2004). That settles the permit question, not whether a state levies its own road tax, entry tax or border charge on a vehicle passing through, a separate matter to confirm with the transporter or state transport department before pricing a route that crosses a state line.

GST on the vehicle line: what actually applies, and what to confirm with your CA

Passenger transport by a fuel-inclusive motor vehicle, the standard vehicle-with-driver hire most operators book, is taxed at 5% GST with no input tax credit as of August 2026, under Notification No. 11/2017-Central Tax (Rate) (quoted in Delhi High Court, Uber India Systems v Union of India, 2023). The same entry covers ordinary contract-carriage vehicle hire, not just app-based cab bookings, so a tempo traveller or Innova on a multi-day tour typically sits in the bracket referenced on the GST rate card every tour operator should pin.

That's also where a single blog post, including this one, should stop being trusted. This entry has been amended more than once since 2017, and some transporters invoice under a different registration that changes the applicable rate. Confirm the rate your transporter charges, and whether it's correctly classified, with your CA before standardising a costing template on it.

Worked table: one circuit, three quoting models, and the vehicle-size break-even at 22 pax

Say your circuit is a 6D/5N Delhi-Manali-Delhi tempo traveller run, roughly 1,150 km door to door, the kind the peak-season playbook for the hills covers from the other end. Every rupee figure below is illustrative, chosen for clear arithmetic, not a market rate to quote anyone.

Component	Model A: flat per-km + km/day floor	Model B: per-day rate + km cap	Model C: full-day disposal
Running rate assumed	₹16/km, 200 km/day floor	₹3,000/day, 180 km cap, ₹18/km beyond	₹3,300/day, unlimited local + intercity
Running cost (6 days)	₹19,200 (floor binds at 1,200 billed km)	₹19,440 (base ₹18,000 + 80 extra km)	₹19,800
Driver bata	₹3,000 (6 days)	₹3,000	₹3,000
Night halt	₹1,500 (5 nights)	₹1,500	₹1,500
Permit/toll/parking	₹2,200	₹2,200	₹2,200
Empty return leg	N/A (round-trip, return already in billed km)	N/A	N/A
Total	₹25,900	₹26,140	₹26,500
Per pax (10 pax)	₹2,590	₹2,614	₹2,650

Three headline rates that look nothing alike, ₹16/km, ₹3,000/day and ₹3,300/day, land within roughly 2% of each other once every component is priced in. The model that looks cheapest on a WhatsApp message isn't reliably the model cheapest on the actual bill.

Now size the vehicle: a 22-pax group, choosing between one 26-seater coach and two 12-seater tempo travellers on the same circuit.

Component	One 26-seater	Two tempo travellers
Running cost (6 days, illustrative day-rate)	₹39,000 (₹6,500/day)	₹39,600 (₹19,800 each)
Driver bata	₹3,000 (1 driver)	₹6,000 (2 drivers)
Night halt	₹1,500 (1 driver)	₹3,000 (2 drivers)
Permit/toll/parking	₹3,000 (1 vehicle)	₹4,400 (2 vehicles)
Total	₹46,500	₹53,000
Per pax (22 pax)	₹2,114	₹2,409
Seats used / empty	22 of 26 (4 empty)	22 of 24 (2 empty)

The two-tempo-traveller option fills more seats but costs more per pax, because bata, night halt and permit/toll/parking all double with the driver and vehicle count. Running cost alone barely moves; the per-vehicle fixed lines decide which size wins, not the per-km rate. Run your own circuit's numbers before assuming a larger vehicle always wins; a narrow hill road only the smaller vehicles can take flips the answer.

Common questions

Driver bata charges per day: is there a fixed rate?

No. There's no government-fixed or single-association-fixed rate for driver bata anywhere in India. It varies by city, season and remoteness, so the only reliable number is the one your transporter quotes in writing before the tour.

Tempo traveller and Innova rate per km: why there's no single answer

Every rate quoted for a tempo traveller or Innova per km is one vendor's city-specific price, not a market standard, and it typically excludes the other five cost lines this post covers. Ask for the full breakdown, running basis, minimum km, bata, night halt, permit/toll/parking, before comparing numbers across transporters.

Does an All India Tourist Permit mean I don't have to pay state road tax?

No. The ATP settles permit jurisdiction: a state cannot impose its own separate permit rules on a validly all-India-permitted vehicle. It says nothing about state road tax, entry tax or border charges some states may separately levy; confirm those locally before pricing the route.

The short version

• Cost a vehicle line as six parts: running rate, minimum-km-per-day floor, driver bata, night halt, permit/toll/parking pass-through, and the empty return leg on a one-way drop.
• The three quoting models (flat per-km with a floor, per-day with a km cap, full-day disposal) aren't comparable by headline rate alone. Run the actual km and days through each before picking one.
• No government body or trade association fixes driver bata or night halt rates. Get them from the transporter in writing, per departure, not from a benchmark.
• Garage-to-garage billing adds the transporter's own dead mileage to your bill; point-to-point doesn't. Ask which basis a quote uses before costing it in.
• A one-way drop still bills for the vehicle's empty return leg in most models. Don't quote it at half the round-trip rate.
• An All India Tourist Permit settles nationwide plying rights, not state road tax or border charges. Confirm those separately for routes crossing state lines.
• Vehicle-with-driver passenger transport carries 5% GST with no ITC under current rules, but the notification has been amended before. Confirm the applicable rate with your CA before standardising a costing template on it.