Chandigarh: Vehicle owners in Punjab are facing huge delays of over a month in issuance of printed copies of registration certificates (RCs) and driving licences (DLs) because of shortage of smart cards.
Kamal Soi, road safety expert and member of the National Road Safety Council, on Tuesday claimed that printing of RCs and DLs had come to a complete standstill and it had resulted in a “huge pendency of two lakh cards” at the offices of the transport authorities.
Moneesh Kumar, state transport commissioner, told TOI that the pendency was in view of global shortage of smart card chips. While the vendor has been showcaused, people have been given the option of downloading their vehicle registration certificates and driving licences from the DigiLocker or the mParivahan app, he added.
For services at the RTA offices, too, printouts of the digital versions are being accepted. In case of any doubts about the authenticity, the bar code of the document can be scanned and checked,” he said.
Meanwhile, Soi said that people were facing inconvenience and at some places there was delay of over a month, which was in violation of the contract executed by the transport department with the service provider as the RC or DL is to be made available within 1 week of application. Soi alleged that the staff of the transport department was giving different reasons for the delay.
“At times, they blame the pendency on the internet not working, or approval or unavailability of smart card chips,” he said. Soi demanded that the transport department should immediately impose a penalty on the service provider for the delay in making DL/RC as per the terms of the contract and compensate the general public by paying them the penalty amount, as is due to them, towards compensation for delay. Amarjit, a resident of Ludhiana said that his wife had made several rounds of the transport office to get the RC of his new car, but the staff blamed it on the smart chip companies citing a shortage of chips due to global factors. Another transport department official said that most smart card chips were mostly produced by two leading French and Chinese companies and there had been delays after generation was hit during the Covid pandemic.
