The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has told state transport departments and traffic police not to pressurise vehicle owners to present original hard copies of their driving licence and other vehicle-related documents. They have also been told to treat electronic copies, authenticated through DigiLocker or government's mParivahan, as valid.
This directive means that traffic police will record violations by logging on to a central database using their mobile phones or other devices to read the QR code of the e-documents and not take away the originals.
This move has been necessitated after impounded original documents, which the police take from traffic violators, get lost and the owners face a lot of hassles to get new ones.
The ministry says that the offences committed by drivers are stored electronically through eChallan in the Vahan and Sarathi databases hence there is no need to physically seize documents. It also said that electronic records on DigiLocker and mParivahan are legally recognised and are as good as original documents issued by transport authorities as per the IT Act and the Motor Vehicles Act.
The DigiLocker app is available on both Android and Apple's iOS but mParivahan is only available on Android at present and will be available on iOS in the next 10 days.
In July, the government had proposed that transport enforcement authorities accept digital copies of all vehicle documents. According to the advisory, if the registration details of the vehicle on eChallan/mParivahan app contain the insurance details, then there is no need for the vehicle owner to present a physical copy.
The move comes after the ministry received many complaints and RTI applications saying that transport departments and traffic police across many states insist on presentation of original documents and refuse to accept digital copies.
