Hyderabad National International Specials General

Driving licences to be linked with Aadhaar: Centre to SC

Thu 08 Feb 2018, 09:21:31

New Delhi: The Centre is in the process of linking driving licences with Aadhaar number to weed out fake licences and a software for this covering all states on a real time basis is under preparation, the Supreme Court was told on Wednesday.

A bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta was informed about it by a court-appointed committee on road safety headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan.

This assumes significance as a five-judge Constitution bench headed by chief justice Dipak Misra is currently hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme and the enabling 2016 law.

The committee, in its report filed in the top court, said it had held a meeting on 28 November last year with the joint secretary of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) to discuss several issues, including procurement of fake licences and how to eliminate it.

The advocate representing the

committee, told the bench that the panel was scheduled to have a meeting with the MoRTH and other authorities concerned on 22-23 February to discuss compliance of directions given by the apex court earlier.

Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for the ministry, told the bench that fatalities in road accidents in India have gone down by around 3% in 2017 as compared to 2016.

The bench said it was "heartening to know" that number of fatalities and injuries in road accidents have come down.

In its report, the committee said it had asked states and union territories (UTs) to forward road accident data for entire 2017.

"The committee has since received data from all the states/UTs, except Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram and Daman and Diu which indicates that in the states/UTs which have submitted data, there has been a reduction of 4,558 fatalities (i.e. 3.0%) and 24,023 injuries (i.e. 5.0%) in 2017 as compared to 2016," the report said.

Share Tweet

No Comments For This Post, Be first to write a Comment.