Smart card drivers’ license program begins in Uttar Pradesh

Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav recently announced the launch of smart card drivers’ licenses in certain regions of Uttar Pradesh in India, The Times of India reports.

Under this program, smart card-based drivers’ licenses will include a biometric thumbprint as well as digital signatures. Applicants will have to be registered in-person at the transport office. According to the Times report, these new drivers licenses are currently available from 10 regional offices across the country. These offices are: Lucknow, Agra, Allahabad, Kanpur, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Jhansi, Aligarh and Barabanki.

According to a separate Times report, as many as 120 people came to get learners’ permits with the new smart card license, and nearly 30 others came out to upgrade their existing license to a smart card license, though technical difficulties made issuing licenses temporarily impossible.

For applicants, the cost of this new license is marginal, and costs less than $1.

This new license will be made of plastic and will be embedded with a microprocessor chip with 64KB of on-board memory, which will contain the biometric details of the driver.

The introduction of these smart card licenses will be implemented in Uttar Pradesh in stages. The first districts to be included have already started issuing licenses and in the rest of the included districts, licenses will be issued from April 2013.

 

Article Topics

biometric cards  |  biometrics  |  government  |  identification  |  verification