DL, RC alert! Old style driving licences to be stopped; New driving licenses, registration certificates coming soon

Government is set to introduce new driving licences and registration certificates across the country and this is set to give sleepless nights to traffic violators, forgers and other wrongdoers. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has prescribed a common standard format and design of the Driving Licence and the Certificate of Registration for the entire country. A notification to this effect was issued on March 1, 2019. The step has been taken to standardise the documents across all states and prepare a centralised digital repository that can also help in checking forgery and duplication.

The government has decided to get rid of a paper or booklet based driving licences or the registration certificates. Now, these certificates would only be provided in two types of cards: a PVC based card or a Poly Carbonate one. The state governments will have the option to decide on the type of material of the driving licence to be provided.

"The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has prescribed a common standard format and design of the Driving Licence and the Certificate of Registration for the entire country... The option of providing a paper or booklet based driving licence or the registration certificate has been done away with," the ministry said in a release.

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The new cards would have a QR code on them which would enable easy linking and access and validation of the information on the cards with the SARATHI or VAHAN database. As the Ministry had recently issued amendments of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989 enabling transport related documents in an Electronic Form, the QR would facilitate the enforcement authorities.

The notification was released days after Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that the government is thinking about a law which makes it mandatory to link the Aadhaar card with driving licences. "At present, what happens is that the guilty person who causes an accident flees the scene and gets a duplicate licence. This helps him go scot-free," he had said in January.