Smart driving licences get govt nod

The Centre’s ambitious plan of introducing one nation, one driving licence (DL) is set to start soon with the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways giving its nod to the design and colour of the proposed smart card-based DL.

The smart card DL, which will have a certain colour pattern, will be a tamper-proof plastic card embedded with a microprocessor chip. The chip will have all details about the licence-holder stored in it, which will be maintained in National Informatics Centre database. The database will act as a national register and state register for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

The cards will carry the name of the driver in both English and the state’s official language. It will include the driver’s blood group also. The licence, sources said, will be issued in the name of Indian Union and not in the name of the state where it is registered. 

“As it is a tamper-proof card, if any smart card is seized for committing offence, the driver cannot get a new card by any fraudulent means,”an official in the road transport ministry told Deccan Herald. The proposed smart card will be uniform in its features across the country. Currently, different states issue different designs of DL which are not only vulnerable to duplication but also create confusion among law enforcing agencies.

The notification, which has received all required clearances from different ministries, will be issued soon, said the official. As the ministry has already prepared a central database of driving licences, once the rules are notified for issuing new types of DL, all the states have to introduce these smart cards within one-and-a-half year. As biometric data of licence holder are recorded, the regional transport offices (RTO) can easily check whether a person already has a licence issued by a different state while issuing a new licence, said the official.

In a bid to curb increasing road accidents, the ministry also wanted to introduce point system on each driving licence holder.

If a driver is found to be involved in more number of accidents or traffic violations, there will be a system to add points against his driving licence. If the points reach a certain level, the licence will be suspended for a particular period.

Before launching the points system, all the states first have to introduce the smart card-based driving licences, said the official.