The Indian government plans to roll out uniform smart driving license and vehicle’s registration certificates across the country. Across the country, the format, colour, design of DLs will be the same and will also be embedded with microchips and QR codes.
Different states and UTs issuing its own driving licenses in its own format has created some chaos for the government and traffic police. New data shows that over 25% of Indians hold more than one driving licenses and while the Government has not made it mandatory to link DL to aadhar it is working on issuing a uniform Driving Licenses across all States and Union Territories (UTs) says a Times of India report.
As early as July 2019, all new Driving Licenses (DL) issued by RTOs across the country will carry the same uniform look which means, same format, same colour, same design and same security features. All new DLs will also be embedded with a SIM card like microchip and QR codes. The report also suggests that like in metro cards, all new DLs near-field communication (NFC) feature that will enable traffic cops to access the details easily. New smart driving licenses will feature the National and State emblems along with the name of issuing authority. It will also state the blood group and declaration for organ donation. Other details like on the current DLs will stay as it is including the mention of license is valid for which category of vehicles.
This new uniform change will not just be on new and learners license. All the renewed license will have this new look and so will vehicle’s registration certificates (RCs). With the new BS-VI norms coming in, the RC will clearly have to mention its chassis number and emission norm (BS-IV/BS-VI) clearly on the RC.
A report by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways further confirms that over 32,000 new driving licenses are issued every day in India and over 43,000 vehicles are registered every day. The implementation of the new process will see the issuance of new driving licenses and anyone going in for renewal or re-registration will automatically get the new DLs and RC for its vehicles. The Government of India has already begun the groundwork for this new system and the nationwide rollout is expected by July 2019. The cost of moving to this new system and issuance of the new smart driving license will not be more than Rs 20 and State Governments will be given enough time to roll out this new process.
This new development comes soon after Nitin Gadkari’s confirmation on Ministry of Road Transport is working on a new database that will help in reducing data redundancy of driving licenses and reduce the multiplicity of driving licenses Having more than one DL is illegal and the government will have a massive crackdown against people holding with more than one DL. The use of DigiLocker and the mParivahan app requires one to link its aadhar and DL which is another way the MoRTH is working towards implementing of a single person single driving license across India.
