A shortage of semiconductor chips continues to impact the issue of chip-baseddriver’s licences and automobile registration cards, to the frustration of new vehicle owners.
During most of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, disruption in the supply chain and the Russia-Ukraine war caused a shortage of chips that meant that smart drivers’ license were not issued, said Pethi Sarguru, CEO of Versatile Card Technology( VCT) one of the largest manufacturers of smart cards used for PAN cards and voter IDs.
Tenders for manufacture of these smart documents are yet to be floated in multiple states, said several persons aware of the situation. In Maharashtra, the tender for smart drivers’ licences has been awarded to Manipal Technologies, Vivek Bhimanwar, Transport Commisioner, Maharashtra told ET, adding that he expects the shortage to ease in two or three months once the supplier is on-boarded.
P Srinivas Rao , chairman & CEO of KL Hi-Tech, a Hyderabad-based provider of secure based printing solutions to financial institutions and banks, said that tenders for drivers’ licences are in process in several other states.
Shortage of chips affected issuance of cards by banks late last year, but the situation improved after intervention by government and private agencies.
Several automobile dealers said that there are delays in issuing drivers’ licences as well as smart cards for vehicle registration.
In some states Covid led disruptions have created problems for new vehicle buyers over the entire last year. An IT employee in Kolkata told ET that he had bought his new car in mid 2022 and never received the smart card for it. “The authorities had told me to make do with Digilocker or get a paper print out,,” he said.
A senior official of the motor vehicle department in Kolkata said that there was no tender process initiated during the pandemic, and since sales of new vehicles skyrocketed in 2021-2022, that led to a massive backlog. “Now if those car owners intend to get a smart card, they will need to apply for a duplicate one,” he said.
However, with the advent of Digilocker, the problem of harassment from roadside traffic personnel has gone down though, said Nikunj Sanghi ,a leading automotive dealer based out of Alwar.
The official quoted above said that given most of the vehicle owners have digital copies of their documents, the relevance of a smart card is something that needs to be re-examined.
“India is moving towards a digital ecosystem and to carry a lot of paperwork in your vehicle cannot be the future,” he added.
