Transport Dept clears 4 lakh pending driving licences, registration certificates

In a major relief to vehicle owners, the Transport Department has cleared pendency of around 4-lakh driving licences (DLs) and registration certificates (RCs).

The department has got the documents printed through the National Informatics Centre Services Inc. (NICSI), a government-owned firm. “We will ensure that there’s zero pendency in future,” said a senior government functionary.

Around 1.40 crore vehicles are registered in the state and 8,000 to 10,000 RCs and DLs are issued every day. Due to delay in allotting the work of printing smart cards to a new vendor, the pendency had touched 4 lakh in the past one year.

For the past three months, the DLs and RCs are not being printed due to the shortage of smart cards. Consequently, the backlog crossed 3 lakh, causing harassment to the applicants. The worst-affected are those who have to drive outside the state.

As the pendency increased manifold after the exit of the vendor — Smart Chip Pvt Ltd — the department has hired 140 employees on a contractual basis to print smart cards.

All driving test ranges to have HAMS tech

After testing artificial intelligence (AI)-based system to check skills of driving licence (DL) applicants at Mohali automated driving test range, the department has decided to adopt same method at all 32 driving test ranges.