News Technology

Government of India to Launch E-challan and M-parivahan Apps to Improve Road Safety and Citizen Interactions

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in India will soon launch two mobile apps to help improve road safety, facilitate citizen interactions, and provide a digital solution for enforcement of traffic rules in the country.

The “e-challan” app is an enforcement app that will allow traffic police and transport authorities to enforce road safety rules in Indian cities. This app will also be integrated with the Vahan and Sarathi applications. The “e-challan” will help connect all stakeholders through a common system, while ensuring data integrity and improving transparency. It will ease operations and monitoring through digitization of records.

The citizen-centric “m-Parivahan” app would provide virtual driving license and registration certificates through back-end connection to the transport national register. This will assist people in searching establishing the genuineness of a vehicle and driver. It will ensure safety of passengers who are hiring a driver. People planning to buy a second hand car would be able to use this app to determine the genuineness of the car. This app would also help officials in reporting accidents or traffic violations. Such cases would be directed “transmitted to concerned traffic authorities in the state and the concerned Regional Transport Offices (RTOs).”

“The ministry is planning to launch two apps related to road safety and customer facilitation. One of them would be e-challan which would be used by the enforcement authorities and another would be m-Parivahan which would provide host of services to citizens,” a Road Ministry official said.

“We expect to give big push to the road safety cause with these two apps and also facilitate customers while interacting with the transport department,” the official added.

India’s Motor Vehicles Act provides powers to police and transport authorities to take action against the people who violate traffic rules. When a traffic police official would key in a driving licence number in the “e-challan” app, they would get detailed information about the licence holder from the database. They would then generate the challans by ticking the proper violation.

“e-challan mechanism facilitates payments as also cashless model… I am sure that the states over a period of time would come and join this platform. Already some states have started pilot run and it has been quite good,” he said.

In India, 28th Road Safety Week will begin January 9, and both apps are expected to be launched during this occasion. A conclave is also being organized on January 10 to involve corporates in the mission of promoting road safety in India. This conclave will be attended by Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways.

“We expect the corporates to make commitment for road safety. This is the first time we are holding such an event. We are trying to involve the corporates also in road safety,” the official said.