A method and system for recognizing a license plate character utilizing a machine learning classifier. A license plate image with respect to a vehicle can be captured by an image capturing unit and the license plate image can be segmented into license plate character images. The character image can be preprocessed to remove a local background variation in the image and to define a local feature utilizing a quantization transformation. A classification margin for each character image can be identified utilizing a set of machine learning classifiers each binary in nature, for the character image. Each binary classifier can be trained utilizing a character sample as a positive class and all other characters as well as non-character images as a negative class. The character type associated with the classifier with a largest classification margin can be determined and the OCR result can be declared.