Tracing the ownership of a vehicle involved in an act of terrorism will be a few clicks away, with the road transport and highways ministry and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) launching a centralised database of vehicle registration and driving licences on Wednesday.
Launching the two schemes — Sarathi for licences and Vahan for vehicle registration, road transport minister C P Joshi said these schemes would be of great help to the people. “These schemes will also benefit the security agencies a lot,” Joshi said.
He said efforts should also be made to make users aware of these facilities, since a large section of people engaged in the transport sector are semi-literate. “The move should aim at abolishing brokers in the transport authorities,” he added.
Under these schemes, there will be two web portals, one for licence and the other for vehicle registration, and limited departments will have access to these portals. These portals will contain details of all driving licences issued and vehicles registered across the country.
Under the new system, a uniform driving licence will be issued across the country. “Within a month, a gazette notification will be issued to make it mandatory that all new licences look alike and be issued as Indian Union Driving Licence,” said an official of the road transport ministry. He said this would help them in detecting people with multiple driving licences.
On these portals, people can apply for driving licence and registration certificate, among other things. “These portals will also facilitate online payment of different taxes, fees and transport charges by the end of this year,” said deputy director of NIC, Mahesh Chandra.