It is quite a tedious job to carry all the vehicle documents that include RC Book, insurance, pollution certificate, and the license all the time we take the vehicles out. The traffic police is more interested in finding out your fault to issue the challan rather than helping the citizens by understanding their difficulty. But now you don’t have to worry about it anymore, and there is no need to carry the vehicle documents and license copy.
According to the Techiyogiz It is now official that Ministry of Road Transport has issued a notification informing that digital driving license and vehicle’s RC papers stored in DigiLockers are now legally recognized at par with the
original documents as per the IT Act 2000 and is valid under the Motor Vehicles Act 1988.
The letter issued by the ministry has been addressed to the principal secretaries, secretaries of the department of transport, DGs, SP Traffic, and all State/UT Transport Commissioners states that the implementation of the notification shall be brought into force with immediate effects.
According to the reports, Road Transport Ministry headed by Nitin Gadkari said that the action has been taken keeping in the mind various RTI applications received by Transport Department in which the citizens have raised an issue of harassment by traffic police for not carrying the physical copies of vehicle documents.
The RTI applicants have suggested making use of Digilocker and mParivartan apps to make the process easy and faster.
Further clarifying, the government’s DigiLocker platform built by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has the facility to pull a citizen’s Driving Licence or the Registration Certificate or any other certificate in an electronic form.
It is now confirmed that these documents on the DigiLocker or mParivahan are deemed to be legally recognized at par with the original documents as per the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
It is further notified that all the insurance companies will now upload the data pertaining to vehicle insurance, renewal on the government-run Vahan app database and the same will be reflected on the mParivahan / eChallan app of the Ministry.
If the vehicle registration details on the mParivahan / eChallan app contain the details of the policy which is in force, then the requirement of a physical copy of the insurance certificate is also not to be enforced confirmed the notification.
The government in its notification has made it very clear to every State to accept DLs and Vehicle papers on DigiLocker and mParivahan. During an offense when the documents are required to impound a vehicle, the law agency can access Vahan. Sarthi database online through the eChallan system and therefore eliminating the need of physical seizure of any such documents.
The above development, when implemented in Goa, will surely help in eradicating the need of physical papers to be carried every time someone takes the vehicle out. It is very frustrating to carry all the documents especially for the two-wheeler owners/riders it is very difficult to keep the original paper handy every-time. Let’s hope that the Goa Traffic Police implements the above order in the state as soon as possible and make the life of people less difficult. Please share your views on this new development.
