Aadhaar may be linked with driving licence: Ravi Shankar Prasad

PHAGWARA/NEW DELHI: The Centre is considering linking Aadhaar with driving licences to tackle the problem of duplicate and fraudulent documents, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Sunday.

Delivering the presidential address at the Indian Science Congress, the minister said, “We are soon going to bring a law which will make it mandatory to link Aadhaar with driving licences,” according to PTI .

“At present, 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. However, 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.

Duplication because of lack of national database

Sources said this could be done through a law as the Supreme Court in its ruling on Aadhaar had said the ID could be used for welfare schemes and any legitimate state interest. This could mean a measure like Aadhaar linkage with driving licence and it has come up in the context of changes in the motor vehicle act, currently pending in Rajya Sabha.

While several states have taken steps to improve issuance of driving licence, lack of a shared national data-base makes it difficult to track duplication. The same problem affected issuance of passports until recording of biometrics was introduced which reduced the incidence of duplicate and fraudulent documents.