Road safety expert slams Kerala for delay in rolling out smart card driving licences

Eminent road safety expert Kamal Soi has criticised the Kerala government for the alleged inordinate delay and legal issues in implementing various transport-related public services including the conversion of driving licence and registration certificate (DL/RC) into smart cards. Soi, a member of the National Road safety Council, urged Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Governor Mohammed Arif Khan to address the legal troubles related to converting the documents into smart cards and rectify them at the earliest for the benefit of the people. He flagged the issues relating to the introduction of the smart licence in the southern state, asking if the government was only doing an ”eyewash in the name of implementing the scheme”, a statement quoting Soi said.

“Kerala may be the only state, in spite of being the most literate and modern state, which is lacking in implementation of such services. Even about two decades after such services were implemented across the country, Kerala is still relying on paper, denying its citizens the benefits of a modern technology like smart cards,” he alleged.

Soi said he had learnt from various court cases and judicial judgments that somewhere the Transport Department was responsible for dilly-dallying on the whole process of implementation by taking wrong and illegal decisions to nullify the effects of the court judgments. There have been some cases pending in court for years that have delayed converting DL/RCs from paper to smart cards.

Calling for proper implementation of the smart card-based DL/RC scheme in the State, Soi appealed to the State Transport Department to immediately cancel it if it has awarded the contract to any new entity in the light of pending court cases, in order to avoid the implementation being cancelled and called into question by the High Court as has been the case in the past.

DL/RC in the form of a smart card was a citizen-centric scheme which not only facilitated the identification of the vehicle and driver but also helped in scientific enforcement, which ultimately led to reduction in road accidents and deaths, he said.

“I appeal to the Kerala government through the Chief Minister and the Governor of Kerala to take cognisance of all these facts for proper and immediate implementation of the scheme,” Soi added.