The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has allowed the use of the soft copies of driving license, registration certificate and other relevant papers as valid documents under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1998. Car-owners can carry these documents using DigiLocker or mParivahan app on their smartphones
and show it to inquiring authorities legally. "The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has issued an advisory to states to accept Driving Licence, Registration Certificate or other documents in 'electronic form' presented through DigiLocker or mParivahan platform as valid under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and treat them at par with the certificates issued by the transport authorities," according to the ministry's statement.
For now, we will take up DigiLocker as our platform of choice and demonstrate how to use it.
- To start using the application you'll have to sign up on the platform
- Once you're on the website or application (developed by MeitY, Government of India), click on 'Sign up'
- There you'll have to insert your phone number to go forward (prefereably the number linked with Aadhaar)
- The next page will ask you to create a username and password
- The third step will ask for your Aadhaar number which can be skipped if you don't have the ID
- The website will send an OTP to the registered number and the user can enter it to verify details
- Your DigiLocker account has been set up.
How to get your documents in DigiLocker?
- Once you enter the website you'll be able to see the documents that have been issued and other documents that have been uploaded
- To extract a copy of your driving license, registration papers, fitness certificate, click on Issued documents
- On the next page click on 'Check Partners Section'
- In the partners name section search for 'Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, All states'
- In the 'Document Type' section choose between Driving License, Fitness Certificate, Vehicle Registrations or Vehicle Tax Receipt
- On the following page, in accordance to the documents you need, you'll have to enter details like license number, name, vehicle registration number, chassis number etc.
- After submitting the required information, the site will extract a digital copy and save it in the 'Issued documents section.'
Regarding cases of offence when there is a requirement of the documents to be impounded, the enforcement agencies can have such impounding reflected in the VAHAN/SARATHI database electronically through the eChallan system.
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