Link Aadhaar Card with Driving Licence: If you don’t have Aadhaar, it is high time you get one for yourself. India is gradually heading towards a one-card-for-all identification system. Now a new mandate says that you will have to provide Aadhaar Card if you want to get a new driving license or if you want to renew your existing driving license. The process to link DL is still not given by the government of India. We will update this post as soon as this process is released.
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| Link Aadhaar Card with Driving Licence |
The Union Government is about to roll out this information to every state and union territory in India wherein, the respective governments will have to implement this new norm starting October 2017. This new mandate begs one question:
Why is Aadhaar Becoming Mandatory for Driving License?
The answer to this question, according to government sources is that there are people who hold multiple driving licenses. So, to prevent that from happening, Aadhaar becomes a necessity as it contains biometric information of the cardholder.
Biometric information found on the Aadhaar card cannot be duplicated (unless of course you that access to that high-tech forgery stuff shown in Hollywood movies). So, here is another question: “why do people try to or get hold of multiple driving licenses?”
The answer is CHEATING! Multiple reasons can be cited under this head called “CHEATING” such as:
- Escaping investigation for criminal offences.
- Beating the possibility of license suspension because of violation of existing traffic rules.
- Creating a fake identity.
Dealing with the problem of State Government
The Union Ministry of Road Transport has already begun the implementation process. Necessary changes are being incorporated. The problem lies with the fact that it is the state government that issues the driving licenses. It is not a central identity card. So, the Union Government’s concerned ministry will ask all governments of states to introduce this brand-new idea of the safety system. Once this safety switch is installed, the problem of multiple licenses will be rooted out of this system. People can no longer visit various Regional Transport Offices to get multiple licenses.
A government official speaks
One unknown government source said that Aadhaar alone is enough for thoroughly establishing a person’s identity. This means that the very moment a person applies for a driving license, that person’s identity will be established using his or her Aadhaar information.
However, if a person doesn’t have Aadhaar, he or she will be asked to provide a laundry list of documents to establish his or her own identity.
The central government, according to the official, is in a process of including several provisions in the driving license application procedure. These provisions, once incorporated, will allow RTOs in every state to efficiently record all details of the applicants in cases where the applicants fail to provide Aadhaar.
On top of that, the RTOs will be given direct access to Sarathi – the central driving license database. Once the RTOs get this access, they can quickly verify whether an applicant already has a driving license or not that was issued anywhere else in India or from any other RTO in the same state.
The Problem of Manual Job
In case you didn’t know, till now, RTOs process driving license applications manually. Because they do it manually, there is no way they can know whether the applicant holds another license or not because the RTOs don’t really have real-time access to necessary information for cross verification.
The organization which is responsible for licensed drivers’ and vehicles’ database is known as National Informatics Centre or NIC. As of now, NIC has collated almost all data from RTOs and uploaded the same so the RTOs can be given access to such data.
According to the unknown official, the Union Government is speeding up the process of digitization of hard copy data available on licensed drivers and vehicles. Once the digitization process is completed and up-to-date, the problem of multiple license issuance will be eliminated.
It will literally become next to impossible to get hold of additional driving licenses unless some ingenious brain somewhere in India comes up with a process of beating the Aadhaar system.
Official estimates say that as of now, there are around 18 crore driving licenses that have been issued by various RTOs across different states in India.
Over time, more will come but some will be cancelled as well once the new Aadhaar-based system identifies those people who hold multiple driving licenses. That’s a masterstroke!
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