leading the way in the country, Madhya Pradesh becomes the first State to waive off the driving licence fees both for permanent and learner licence for all female applicants. This initiative was taken for the benefit of women in the State, and as anticipated it is being well appreciated; and also encouraging more and more females to apply for driving license.

It’s a general phenomenon that women are shy of applying for a driving license. By this unique initiative the State transport department has encouraged women to go for a driving license and drive responsibly.

“All female applicants no longer pay the usual learners license and driving license fee across any region in Madhya Pradesh. The software developer Partner “Smart Chip”, which handles RTO work, is credited for designing this new software with regard to free learners and driving license for women in Madhya Pradesh in a bid to empower women."

The process of applying for the license remains unchanged with exception to the female applicants as they no longer are required to pay a fee. Same goes for online applicants too, upon applying online for the driving license on the transport department website, when the applicant clicks on ‘female’ in the gender section, the payment option automatically disappears for both learning and permanent candidates.

This measure was taken to prioritise women empowerment in the State.

The initiate is getting overwhelming response and in just one year the State transport department has received around 1.48 lakh applications for ll from female only, with Bhopal and Indore ranking the highest.

The number of female applicants for learners’ license and driving license in Bhopal is 19237 and 9869 respectively.

While the number of applicants for learners license and driving license in Indore is 22535 and 10501 respectively.

Therefore more and more women are applying for driving license in not just these two cities, but the application statistics has actually gone up across all regions of the State including the remote areas.

Even in smaller town like Seoni 1550, Jhabua 767, Singrauli 1925, Katni 1805 and Datia 1127.