Rush for driving license

The massive drive against drivers without license has forced over 2,700 applicants to flock to the 11 RTA offices in Hyderabad and Rangareddy district on Sunday.

With RTA officials deciding to work for two extra hours every day and also function on Sundays, the number of applications has gone up in the last one week. "Compared to the previous Sunday, there has been a steep increase in number of applications today," said an official.

The traffic police had decided to tighten the screws on violators including no-helmet and no-driving license. Until now, citizens used to get away with a penalty for not having a driving license, but thanks to the Supreme Court committee on road safety, which directed the State governments to immediately implement the helmet rule and also wanted them to ensure everyone had a valid driving license.

The Committee also directed the States and Union Territories to submit action taken reports at the end of every three months starting from September 1, 2015. In the five RTA offices under the Hyderabad district, 1,531 applicants had appeared for the Learner’s License test whereas eleven offices in Rangareddy district the number of applicants were 1,238.

The Hyderabad Joint Transport Commissioner (JTC) T Raghunath said that in the city alone the applications used to be 600 to 700 applications in the form of slot bookings but only 50 per cent of them used to turn up for the test. He said that the counters for the learner’s license were increased for speedy transactions.

“Earlier, there were two counters in Khairatabad RTA office, but with increase in number of applications, the counters have been increased to seven,” said JTC. He said that the counters would be increased as per the rush and people can book slot online and appear for a simple test. He said that a booklet bas been brought out by the RTA on the questionnaire of learner’s license test.

“A candidate should get 12 out of 20 marks for passing,” he added. The Rangareddy DTC Praveen Rao said that except for the Parigi office, there were many applications in all the RTA offices under the district. He said that in Parigi no applications were received. Uppal topped the list with 394 applicants where as Kukatpally received only 116 applications.

Applications in RTA Hyderabad
Khairatabad 262
Secunderabad 430
Malakpet 386
Bahadurpura 164
Tolichowki 289
Total 1,531

Applications in RR RTA
Attapur 241
Uppal 394
Ibrahimpatnam 208
Medchal 279
Kukatpally 116
Parigi 00
Total 1,238