Government to soon make Aadhaar linking with driving licence mandatory

The Union Government will soon make it mandatory for linking Aadhaar with driving licences, as per Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The Minister for Law, Electronics and Information Technology said that the Government is soon going to bring a law that will make the linking process mandatory. The Minister was delivering his presidential address at the ongoing 106th Indian Science Congress in Jalandhar on January 6, 2019.

Why is there a need to link Aadhaar with driving license?

• At present, the guilty person who causes an accident flees the scene and gets a duplicate licence which helps him escape blame and prosecution.

• However, with the Aadhaar linkage, one can change his/her name but cannot change his or her biometrics, neither iris nor fingerprints.

• Hence, linking Aadhaar with driving licences would prevent guilty individuals from escaping the scene of an accident and then procuring duplicate licences.

• The moment anyone will try to procure a duplicate licence, the system will inform that the person already has a driving licence and should not be given a new one.

Background

Obtaining a driver’s licence in the country has largely been an unorganised process over the years.

The government is in the process of setting up better equipped driver training schools and a more efficient system to obtain a driving licence.

As far as India’s ‘Digital India’ programme is concerned, India currently has 123 crore Aadhaar cards, 121 crore mobile phones, 44.6 crore smartphones, 56 crore internet users and there has been 51 per cent growth in e-commerce.

The digital payment transactions in the country have also increased manifold to over Rs 2,070 crore in 2017-18.

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