Hyderabad: Motorists’ woes end as RTA starts rolling out chip-based smart cards

Hyderabad: Following complaints from other States regarding the authentication of the Certificate of Registration (RC) issued without electronic chip embedded on card by the Telangana Regional Transport Authority (RTA), the department started issuing smart cards with the chip embedded. Last year in December, due to shortage of PVC-made electronic chips, the RTA was forced to issue a DL and RC without the chip embedded, it was also due to difficulties in importing it from abroad. It was reported that around five lakh DLs and RCs were pending to be issued at various regional offices.

According to the Telangana Auto and Motor Welfare Union, motorists travelling to the other States, carrying the documents issued by the RTA, were facing difficulties, due to no PVC-made electronic chip-embedded smart cards. The police and other authorities were pretentious over the card sans the chip; vehicles were allegedly seized for carrying counterfeit documents.

The union general secretary M Dayanand said though motorists carry photo copies of documents, the chip would not be visible. With the absence of PVC electronic chips in the original document, it was projected to be fake, as all states issued smart cards with electronic chips.

“Finally, after 11 months, the RTA authorities started issuing the documents with electronic chips embedded,” he said. To check use of fake or duplicate DLs and RCs, the Transport officials introduced use of PVC-made electronic chip-embedded smart cards for motorists. An electronic driver’s license is an official document enhanced with an electronic chip, which stores the holder’s personal data, both biographical and biometrical, for verification.