Rs 5 to Rs 100 high security coupons as new currency at National Highway toll plazas

What next ? Chocolates as legal currency for highway users?
Customers are already getting something similar from the Nandini milk parlours in Bangalore!

Isn't this system of parallel currency illegal??

The government halted toll collection when its decision to accept the withdrawn Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at toll plazas led to chaos in the absence of adequate change, causing massive traffic snarls.

The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has introduced high security coupons of denominations ranging from Rs 5 to Rs 100 to serve as currency for toll on national highways and for return as change to motorists after toll deduction. The proposal comes in the wake of the government’s decision not to extend toll exemption on national highways beyond December 2, 2016.

The government halted toll collection when its decision to accept the withdrawn Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at toll plazas led to chaos in the absence of adequate change, causing massive traffic snarls. On November 9, it announced toll exemption until midnight of November 11 but later extended it to November 14, 18 and 24 and finally to December 2, 2016.

Considering that returning change to toll payers would still be a daunting task due to shortage of lower denomination currencies, sources said the ministry has proposed that coupons of denominations Rs 5, 10, 50 and 100 be issued at main toll plazas which motorists could buy and hand over at nearly 400 toll plazas.

Toll collectors would have to accept these coupons and would have the right to hand coupons as change to highway users.

These could be bought against the scrapped Rs 500 notes that are valid for toll payment. However, the ministry is seeking exemption for use of the old Rs 500 note and hence, the proposed coupons for paying toll until December 31. The present deadline for accepting old Rs 500 for toll was until midnight of December 15, 2016.

As a safety measure, these coupons would have security features of bar codes, hologram with the NHAI logo and serial numbers akin to those on new currencies to avoid duplication or printing of fakes.

To prevent black money holders from buying it in bulk for redemption of these coupons against the new currency at a later date, the ministry proposes to distribute them only through officials of the NHAI.

Since these would be distributed through NHAI, the coupons shall be redeemed by the authority both to toll operators as well as motorists. Nearly 90 officials of the NHAI are being deployed for this programme.

The ministry has also lined up sufficient swipe machines at toll booths with help from State Bank of India and others to facilitate payments and flow of traffic.

(Source: IndianExpress.com)

Now, Indians will drive in peace with digital documents

You can now drive with your driving licence, vehicle registration certificate and insurance papers safely kept at home as the government launched this facility with DigiLocker, which transport minister Nitin Gadkari said would arrest corruption and bring in transparency .
You can access digital copies of the documents on the mobile phone using the DigiLocker app.

Road transport and IT ministries jointly launched on Wednesday integration of DigiLocker with driving licences (DLs) and vehicle registration certificates (RCs), which enables the user to download these digitally verified documents.Under this arrangement, the transport ministry's National Register has been integrated with DigiLocker.

Once the data from the remaining RTOs is updated in the National Register, the digital copies of those driving licences and vehicle registration certificates will also be available via DigiLocker.

This is seen as the largest integration under DigiLocker system so far as the national registry of the transport ministry has 19.6 crore RCs and 9.2 crore DLs.

Since the source of such digitally verified documents is government entities, these will be deemed valid by law enforcement agencies including traffic police. This will effectively free people from the hassle of carrying paper documents everywhere they go.

"All such downloaded documents will have the QR code to authenticate them and as per the IT Act all digitally signed documents will be treated at par with the physical issued documents," said an IT ministry official. He said they will soon start campaigns to make personnel of all enforcement agencies aware of this provision.

Launching the service, Gadkari said,"There will be a few, who will be unhappy as they will no more have `Lakshmi Darshan' (bribe money)." IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said DigiLocker will prove to be a programme for transforming India and achieving the vision of paperless governance.

In order to access the digital RC and DL, one needs to first sign up for a DigiLocker. He then needs to download the DigiLocker app. In the mobile app he will have to select the issued documents section. The enforcement personnel such as traffic police can verify the soft copies offline using the QR code.

(Source: The Times of India, Kolkata dated 2016-09-08)