Government to soon link driving licence with Aadhaar: Supreme Court told

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 November 28 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.

“On the issue of fake licences, joint secretary, MORTH informed that NIC (national informatics centre) is now preparing ‘Sarthi-4’ under which all the licences would be linked to Aadhaar,” the report said.

“This software will cover all the states on a real-time basis and it will not be possible for anyone to get a duplicate or fake licence anywhere in the country,” it said.

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 February 22-23 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 three percent 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 told the court that through its November 24 last year letter, it had asked all the states to set up a road safety fund which would be non-lapsable and to have a steady flow of funds.