Bhopal: Road Transport Dept Lacks Mechanism To Know Expiry Of Insurance & Tax

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The state road transport department lacks mechanism to check validity of insurance of vehicles running on state roads. Department is planning to form a portal on which the officer can get all information on one platform.

On Wednesday evening, accident took place in Guna as bus caught fire. About 13 people died and 15 were seriously injured. The fitness of the bus was valid up to February 2022, the tax was valid up to July 2022 and so was the insurance. The bus was running as RTO took no action.

In the state, more than one lakh vehicles are unfit according to the government record. To prevent them from running on the roads, department does not have adequate staff.

Road transport commissioner Sanjay Jha who was removed by government on Thursday after Guna bus fire incident told Free Press that e-sewa portal services offered facilities like licence, learning licence and registration card.

A national level portal Vahan Citizen Services is present. However, state needs a comprehensive portal in which details of the vehicle, including its insurance, road tax, fitness etc should be available.

At present, there is not mechanism to get all the details at one place. The officials have to rely on offline details, which can be manipulated and at the time of checking it is not possible to stop the bus full of passengers for a long time.

According to official process, if the vehicle’s insurance or tax expires, the vehicle goes off the road. The vehicle sans valid permit has to be checked physically by the team of transport department. He added that department is in process to hire a consultant to prepare such unified portal for department.