BENGALURU: With the amendment to the Motor Vehicle Act by the central government, which proposes uniform driving licences (DL) and vehicle registration certificates (RC), the state Transport Department is now discussing ways to implement the changes.
While the Centre has said that the change will be implemented from October 1, the move may take a while in Karnataka and is expected to be implemented by November 15, according to a source in the Transport Department. The driving licences and vehicle registration certificates will follow a single design and everything from the old design to the printing style will be changed. A microchip and a QR code will feature in both documents.
As of now, each state has separate designs for DLs and RCs and the move aims to bring a unified system across the country. To change to the new format, a vehicle owner will have to pay Rs 200 for each document. There is no deadline set for the shift but document holders can get it changed during visits to the RTO. “There will be an option given to the document holders to convert their cards and they can do it from the website itself,” a source said.
With the amended Motor Vehicle Act in place, the traffic police will also be able to access information on traffic violations and fines accumulated. “Through this, the police can easily access any vehicle information,” the source added.
“We are in preliminary discussions and a meeting was held with the Transport Commissioner. It may take one to two weeks to finalise the implementation,” a Transport Department spokesperson told The New Sunday Express.
The present design of the DL and RC was developed with the help of Rosmerta Technologies. “There
are some issues that we are facing. The company will have to completely redesign the cards and there are some technical issues regarding this. We are also awaiting a letter from National Informatics Centre (NIC) on the hardware and software that needs to be used for this,” said a transport department official representing Additional Commissioner of Transport (e-governance and environment) Shivraj Patil.
The department officials will have another meeting with the Commissioner on these issues.
The National Informatics Centre, which operates from New Delhi under the Union IT ministry, handles the VAHAN portal for vehicle registration and related services as well as an application called SARATHI for driving licences, which has the countrywide database of all driving licence-holders.