August 31: Nearly two years after the scheme was withdrawn, the Motor Vehicles Department will start issuing new laminated credit-card type driving licenses from January next year.A committee headed by transport commissioner Vinay Mohan Lal has formalised the features of these new laminated tamper-proof driving licenses to replace the existing book-type licence. ``By September 15, the committee will finalise all the specifications of this new driving license,'' Lal told Express Newsline. The MVD is to call for tenders after the features are finalised, he added. The licenses will first be introduced in Mumbai, Thane and Pune and then extended to the rest of the state.The new license card will not be a piece of laminated paper, and will feature a hologram and two computer generated photographs of the driver to prevent tampering.The cards will not exceed Rs 60 and will have new features like the driver's blood group and the phone number and the address of the person to be contacted in case of anemergency. ``We have introduced these features in view of the increasing number of motor vehicle accidents,'' said Lal.In 1990, the Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal started issuing laminated driving licenses with poloaroid photographs in RTO offices. However, the scheme was discontinued two years back due to some technical difficulties and the RTOs reverted to the earlier book system.
