Road Ministry to issue advisory to States, UTs

Amid confusion over the use of electronic documents, the Road Transport and Highway Ministry on Friday decided to issue a fresh advisory to the States and Union Territories and all stakeholders to treat digitised documents as valid papers.

Those carrying driving licence, motor insurance papers, vehicle registration and other related papers in the Government-approved apps such as Digilocker, M-Parivahan, Sarathi, etc, will not be penalised.

This comes in the wake of grievances received in the Ministry wherein citizens have complained that documents stored in Digilocker or the m-Parivahan app are not considered valid by the traffic police or the transport department.

The Centre has already directed Insurance Information Board (IIB) to upload and make available online insurance related documents in the VAHAN database on a routine basis.

“In view of this confusion in recent days, the enforcement officers would be made aware of the new provision so that

citizens are not harassed. In November 2018, the Government had issued notification to legalise the use of digital traffic documents,” said the official.

States using any such online enforcement solution through alternative database have been asked to transfer the relevant information electronically through web service of VAHAN/Sarathi database.

As per the amended provision, the citizen can produce the transport related documents such as registration, insurance, fitness and permit, driving licence, certificate for pollution under control and any other relevant documents if required in physical or electronic form on demand by an uniformed police or any other officer authorised by the State Government on this behalf.

“If the vehicle registration details are there on Digilocker, VAHAN, Sarathi, m-Parivahan/eChallan app then the requirement of a physical copy of the insurance certificate will not be mandatory,” said the official.