Karnal: Driver's licence issued to 'not specified' gender in past 11 years

Parveen Arora

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Karnal, February 18

The driver’s licence (DL) issuing authority of Karnal has issued 9,847 driver’s licences to ‘not specified’ category of gender since 2010. Reason, the applicants did not mention their gender while filing the application forms. The authority did not notice the flaw.

As many as 4,266 driver’s licences have been issued to “not specified” category in 2010, 5,217 in 2011, 157 in 2012, 69 in 2013, 35 in 2014, 19 in 2015, 3 in 2016, 3 in 2017, 20 in 2018, 4 in 2019, 56 in 2020, and 4 in 2021.

It was revealed in a RTI query filed by Karnal-based RTI activist Rajesh Sharma, who has sought information about the number of driver’s licences issued in the past 11 years with details of men, women and transgender.

The number of women applying for driver’s licences is also very thin in comparison to the men, the reply said. The reply stated that the licensing authority had issued 2,38,044 driver’slicences from January 2010 to December 2021.

The number of men licence holders was high in comparison to women as 2,00,917 men got their licenses in this period, while 27,269 women got the licences. The number of women licence holders was around 11 per cent of the total issued licences in this time period, said the data provided by the Public Information Officer of the SDM Office, Karnal.

As many as 16 transgenders have been granted driver’s licences in this period, the reply said.

However, in the replay nothing was mentioned about the “not specified category” of gender, but when contacted, the authorities said earlier it was not mandatory to mention the gender in the application forms till 2015, but now it is mandatory. The driver’s licences are generated based on the information filled by the applicant.

Gaurav Kumar, SDM-cum-licensing authority of Karnal subdivision, said this data had been generated online through ‘Sarthi’ portal of the Union Government. “Earlier it was not mandatory to mention the gender, due to which licences were issued without specifying the gender, but now the gender column is mandatory and the licences are issued with gender mentioned,” said Kumar, adding that those who are coming to get their old licences renewed, the gender column is being updated.

Was not mandatory

Earlier, it was not mandatory to mention the gender, due to which licences were issued without specifying the gender, but now the gender column is mandatory and the licences are issued with gender mentioned. Gaurav Kumar, SDM-cum-licensing authority of Karnal subdivision