Govt to make driving licence-Aadhaar linking mandatory

While delivering the presidential address at the ongoing 106th Indian Science Congress at Lovely Professional University in Phagwara, the Union minister of law, electronics and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said that the government will soon make it mandatory for linking Aadhaar with driving licences.

"We are soon going to bring a law which will make it mandatory to link Aadhaar with driving licence," the Union minister said, according to PTI.

Prasad said this will curb those who were getting duplicate licences after causing accidents. "At presently, what happens is that the guilty person who causes an accident flees the scene and gets a duplicate licence. This helps him go scot-free," Prasad observed.

Last year, the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutional validity of Aadhaar but had struck down various provisions of the Aadhaar Act on September 26, 2018.

The minister argued that with the linking of Aadhaar and driving licence, a person's biometrics and iris also get linked with the driving licence. So even if the person applies for a duplicate driving licence with a different name, the system will point out that he already has a suspended driving licence.

"With the Aadhaar linkage you can change your name but you cannot change your biometrics, neither iris nor fingerprints. So the moment you go in for a duplicate licence, the system will say this person already has a driving licence and should not be given a new one," said Prasad.

Praising the Centre's 'Digital India programme' Prasad said that it had helped India succefully bridge its urban-rural divide.

Prasad said, "This is the digital profile of India—123 crore Aadhaar cards,121 crore mobile phones, 44.6 crore smart phones, 56 crore internet users, there has been 51 per cent growth in e-commerce. There is 130 crore population in India."

He also said digital payment transactions in the country have increased manifold to over Rs 2,070 crore in 2017-18.

(With PTI inputs)