Smart cards for driving licence & registration docu likely to be back

KOLKATA: The state Transport department is hopeful of resuming issuance of hard copies of smart driving licences and registration certificates in the plastic card format from May. Since the beginning of Covid pandemic in March 2020, the department has been issuing only paper printouts, due to the absence of any licensed vendors.

According to sources in Transport department, a vendor has been registered with the public vehicles department (PVD) office at Beltala which is expected to start issuing the smart cards in a month. The cards will have a QR code instead of embedded chips.

“The motorists are not comfortable to keep documents in paper format. The documents can be downloaded from DigiLocker. Preparations have started and hopefully within a month, we will issue plastic cards. Those who have the paper format can take plastic cards against a fee,” an official in the Transport department said. The documents will be linked to the standardised central database, ‘Sarathi’, for driving licences, and ‘Vahan’ for registration.

Documents produced before law enforcing authorities via DigiLocker platform or mParivahan app is deemed legally recognised at par with the original or physical documents. However, as per provisions of Motor Vehicles Act 1998 and the Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989, the owner/driver has to produce documents like driving license or certificate of registration etc to the enforcing authority on demand. In 2018, the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) had directed all states and Union Territories to ensure that the police administration accept documents presented by citizens through DigiLocker and similar other apps as valid.

The state Transport department also plans to speed up the implementation of vehicle location tracking device (VLTD), which has been made mandatory for government and commercial vehicles, both passenger and goods. “Around 12,000 VLTDs have been installed. From June, we hope to install the device in 10,000-15,000 vehicles a month,” the official said.