The Department of Transport Management has started distributing smart driving licences from its offices outside Bagmati zone too, one and a half year after they were launched in the Kathmandu Valley.  

On Wednesday, the department began issuing the electronic cards from its Gandaki office in Pokhara and Dhaulagiri office in Baglung.

The government has aimed to extend the smart driving licence system throughout the country within the current fiscal year ending mid-July.

Tokraj Pandey, spokesperson for the department, said they started distributing the electronic licences from the Narayani transportation office in Birgunj on Thursday. “We are trying to replace nearly 2 million paper driving licences with smart cards.” 

Around 200,000 smart driving licences have been distributed in Bagmati zone so far.   

Although the department had announced distributing smart licences across the country in November 2016, Pandey said the plan was delayed due to technical problems. 

The smart driving licences are similar to ATM cards issued by banks. They contain an electronic microchip that stores information like the driver’s identity and vehicle registration number. 

The data recorded on the smart driving licence is accessible to all transport offices across the country, and linkages have been created with the traffic police, police and insurance agencies, among others, so that they can get complete information about the driver.

The smart licence enables authorities to eliminate fake licences and keep electronic records of vehicles and their owners. When the card is scanned, the cardholder’s biometric data including traffic violations will be displayed automatically, helping police control repeat violators.

A smart driving licence contains a 512 MB chip in which data about the licence holder is stored. The department is hopeful that the new technology will completely eliminate fraudulent activities related to driving licences. The smart licences will contain data like vehicle registration information, insurance records, records of bank loans and other details. 

This will help the government to keep tabs on licence holders. 

Currently, a person who has had his driving licence revoked can hop to another zone and get a new one. The department plans to replace paper licences completely with technology-enabled licences within three to five years. 

According to the department, around 2 million paper driving licences have been issued till date in Nepal.

Among them, around 1.5 million are estimated to be active. Apart from smart driving licences, the department is also procuring machines that can read details stored in the card. 

The government has started distributing smart driving licences, but the traffic police have not been able to benefit from the move because they lack such machines. 

Nepal begun to digitalise driving licences with a formal launch in December 2015 with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank.