Kottayam: The Kerala Motor Vehicles Department may hand over the printing of the driving licence and vehicle registration certificate to a private company based in Mysuru. Surprisingly, neither was any tender floated nor any advertisement published for this purpose.
The Transport Commissioner has directed the Deputy Transport Commissioner of the central zone to submit a report after examining whether the company’s office at Chittethukara in Kochi has the facilities to print the licence and registration certificate.
The directive issued by the Transport Commissioner states that the company had expressed its interest in printing these documents. The owners of the Mysuru company are Keralites, sources claimed.
The plan to outsource printing follows the recent decision to engage a centralized facility for the distribution of licence and RC. It was also decided to use plastic cards to make these documents and distribute them from the Transport Commissioner’s office.
Current practice
At present, these crucial documents are printed and sent out from the respective Regional Transport Offices. For this service, Rs 200 each is charged from the applicants for the licence and RC. The department incurs only a small expense on the printing.
It was decided earlier to embed the licence and RC with chip. Tenders were called for this purpose. Another tender was floated without informing the company that had taken part in the first tender. But the court issued a stay order on the tender after the company that took part in the first tender moved a plea. Following this, the smart card project was interrupted.
