Aadhaar connected all India driving license likely

New Delhi, March 30: While averting

strike from next month, Road Transport Minister C P Joshi has promised to make the toll collection process at the national highways hassle free and consider Aadhaar card linked

(DL) valid all over India. Currently, every state has its own DL and rules.

Joshi's ministry ensured that the truckers body AIMTC deferred the strike which was to begin from April 1. The ministry has assured to consider their demands in a time-bound manner. This good news comes along with smooth travel on highways, as promised by Joshi.

The government will roll out RFID-based electronic toll collection across all the toll plazas on national highways through out the country by 2014.

"We intend to have by 2014 entire country through ETC (electronic toll collection). Nandan Nilekani has suggested RFID card and we have introduced two new pilot projects. By 2014, we will cover entire toll plazas through ETC mode," Joshi said yesterday evening while interacting with the public on muti-video chat, Google Hangout.

The ETC systems is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. For this, a RFID chip-embedded sticker will be put on the vehicles and money will get deducted at the toll plazas automatically.

This will be pooled electronically at one place and later distributed among the toll companies.

Currently, vehicles have to pay cash at all the toll plazas, leading to massive traffic jams.

People from all over the country such as Bangalore , New Delhi, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar, Roorkee , Andhra Pradesh, Gurgaon, Udaipur, Chennai and Bilaspur, Chattisgarh asked Minister to answer questions on various aspects of road safety.

They wanted to know about creation of proper data base like Australia, US and Europe to identify the exact cause of accident is the first step towards improving safety, issuance of a centralized prepaid toll card which to help reduce the toll passage time, collection effort, hassle to manage change, commuters fuel and corruption, linking all the vehicles and their drivers on one system so that when driver visits different states the hassle of proving his identity is avoided.

Joshi said that government is working with state governments for online registration of vehicles and other related information. On the suggestion of one Driving License in the entire country, he said center will try to integrate the issuance of DL with Aadhaar card.

On the matter of issuing license without proper training, he said in the 11th plan centre had started DL schools in different states and the project will be given more focus in 12th plan.

Joshi also said that the government has launched a pilot project on Gurgaon-Jaipur stretch of National Highway-8 to provide cashless medical treatment to accident victims during the during the first 48 hours of the accident.
The government has already signed an MoU with ICICI Lombard last week and has created a corpus of Rs 20 crore for the scheme.

Meanwhile, the AIMTC has decided to defer the strike which was to begin from April 1.

"This (strike) has been deferred till further notice on assurances from the government that all the demands would be considered in a time-bound manner," All India Motor Transport Congress President Bal Malkit Singh said.

AIMTC has had detailed discussions with the officials of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, he added.

AIMTC, an apex body of transporters (both cargo and passenger) is demanding withdrawal of the hike in third party insurance premium, rollback of partial de-control of diesel prices and removal of anti-dumping duty on import of tyres saying that these issues have adversely impacted road transport sector.