Now, renew your driving licence sitting at home

 Now, renew your driving licence sitting at home

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Christin.MathewPhilip@timesgroup.com

26.01.2022

Bengaluru: In a major relief to motorists across the state, driving licence can now be renewed without visiting Regional Transport Offices.

The transport department on Monday made four more DLrelated services (Sarathi) contactless/faceless. They are: renewal, issuance of duplicate one, change of address and name in licence.

With these four new services, 10 DL-related services are now contactless. Services like issuance of learners licence (LL), change of address in LL, DL extract, issuance of duplicate LL, issuance of international driving permit and change of name in LL have been made contactless from November 1, 2021, in the state.

Rajender Kumar Kataria, principal secretary, transport department, who was instrumental in making these services contactless, said: “Contactless services like renewal of DL will benefit lakhs of vehicle owners across the state. They can avail these services from the comfort of their home and pay fees online. Very soon, citizens will need to visit RTOs only for driving physical tests and fitness certificate (FC) renewal. All other services will be contactless/faceless,” he said. Kataria said the CM has shown special interest in making these services faceless.

Transport department records show 23. 5 lakh applicants across the state availed LL in 2019-20 and 17. 7 lakh in 2020-21. Similarly, 6. 9 lakh applied for renewal of DL in 2019-20 and 6. 2 lakh in 2020-21. Officials said those who want to avail faceless services will have to authenticate with Aadhaar-based e-KYC (paperless offline verification).

At present, six vehicle-related services (Vahan) have been made contactless — change of address in registration certificate, composite fee for national transport permits, hypothecation addition, hypothecation continuation, issue of duplica-te RC and issue of NOC. Most still prefer offline mode Transport department records show 1,01,998 applications were received through e-KYC for DLrelated services (Sarathi) between November 1, 2021 and January 22, 2022. Of this, 96,985 applications were disposed of. A majority of the applications — 1,01,444 — were for LL. However, most Sarathi applicants are still using offline mode (non-e-KYC). A total of 1. 5 lakh applications were received through non-eKYC during the same period.

It’s the same for Vahan services as well. While Vahan portal received only 2,460 applications through contactless mode, RTOs got 74,226 applications through offline mode between November 1, 2021 and January 22, 2022.

Besides tackling corruption and touts at RTOs, contactless services are also aimed at reducing crowding during the pandemic. However, some motorists said few RTOs still reject applications citing small errors. “Some officials insist on visiting RTOs for reasons best known to them. These contactless services are a good move, but they should be monitored at a higher level to ensure people get these benefits without having to pay bribe or facing delays,” said a motorist.

Mini-buses ideal for B’luru roads: CM

Bengaluru: Chief minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday asked the transport department to start procuring more mini-buses for Bengaluru. Saying that they are ideal for public transport in the city due to its narrow roads and heavy traffic, Bommai said the department must start inducting more of them. He also asked transport minister B Sriramulu to start converting the existing bus fleet to CNG. Last year, GAIL had promoted CNG conversion for Bengaluru Urban and Rural bus services.