The Centre has told the Supreme Court that it is in the process of linking driving licences with Aadhaar number to weed out fake licences, and work on a software for this covering all states on a real time basis is in process.
A bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta was informed about it by a court-appointed committee on road safety headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice KS Radhakrishnan.
This assumes significance as a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra is currently hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme and enabling the 2016 law.
The committee, in its report filed in the apex court, said that on the issue of fake licences, joint secretary, MoRTH informed that NIC (national informatics centre) is now preparing ‘Sarthi-4’ under which all the licences would be linked to Aadhaar.
“This software will cover all the states on real time basis and it will not be possible for anyone to get duplicate or fake licence anywhere in the country,” the report said.
Last year, Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had informed that the Centre will soon start linking driving licence with Aadhaar to check the menace of multiple licensing.
The court, while posting the matter for hearing on April 23, said that the committee should ensure compliance of its directions given earlier.
The apex court had in November last year issued a slew of directions on road safety and asked all states and UTs to set up a trauma centre in each district of the country and make safety norms part of school curriculum.
It had also directed that road safety education and counselling be made a part of school curriculum by the state boards by April 1, 2018, and at least one trauma care centre be set up in every district with an ambulance.
The court had issued its directions on a PIL raising the issue of road safety in the country.
(With agency inputs)