Appointments for driver’s licence tests pile up, Delhi residents complain

Pushpal Singh, a resident of Mayur Vihar Phase-I, said: “I had a licence from Uttar Pradesh but it has expired. I also moved to Delhi recently. I applied for the test four months ago and I’m still waiting for the appointment. The grievance cell is also not very supportive, they keep asking me to try again. Because of this, I have to use cabs to go anywhere despite having a car and a bike.”

Another resident, who lives in Safdarjung Enclave, said, “I want to get my RC renewed and my daughter has applied for a licence. We have been waiting for an appointment… I even went to the RTO office to file a complaint but to no avail. My daughter’s college is in Noida and there is no last-mile connectivity… she takes a cab every day, which costs a lot. The authority should speed up the process.”

When asked about the pendency, a senior government official said, “The website was closed for more than a year due to the pandemic. As soon as it opened, thousands of people applied and it could not take the load. The website is managed by the NIC and they block it when there is a lot of traffic.”

The official added, “We have written to the NIC about the complaints and hope the issue will be rectified soon. Besides, to cut waiting period, we are working to increase the number of test tracks at RTOs. Currently, the tracks are not enough to conduct a large number of tests per day.”

The transport department is likely to set up 10 tracks at state universities and extend space at existing automated test tracks. Currently, there are 11 such tracks at RTOs. In 2021-22, an average number of 30,078 driving tests were conducted on these automated tracks and the pass percentage was 63.77.

The number of driving licences issued last year also decreased compared to 2020, shows government data. It shows that from January-December 2020, the state transport authority issued a total number of 1,34,082 licences, while it issued 1,27,389 licences last year. Of the total licences issued last year, 1,14,360 were issued to men, 12,987 to women and 42 to transgenders.

“The difference in numbers is due to the pandemic. Several services were closed last year during the second wave. When the website opened, there was a huge rush for driving tests, RC renewal and other vehicle-related requests. Besides, there was a huge pendency of previous applications which also made the process slow,” said another transport official.

Further, under the faceless service, the transport authority received about 1,43,947 requests related to driving licences in 2021 (when the service was launched) and 0.92% of requests are pending beyond 30 days.