The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has prescribed a common standard format and design of the Driving Licence and the Certificate of Registration for the entire country. A notification to this effect was issued on 1st March 2019.The option of providing a paper or booklet based driving licence or the registration certificate has been done away with. Now, such certificates can only be provided in two types of cards viz. a PVC based card or a Poly Carbonate one. Detailed specifications have been prescribed for these cards in the notification. The enriched specifications are of high standard and would enable durable and quality cards.
The State Governments have been given the option to decide on the type of material of the card to be provided. Further, the optional features of providing a chip based smart card or a contact less features (NFC) has also been provided which the States can prescribe. A QR code has been prescribed on the cards. This would enable easy linking and access and validation of the information on the cards with the SARATHI or VAHAN database. As the Ministry had recently issued amendments of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989 enabling transport related documents in an Electronic Form, the QR would facilitate the enforcement authorities.