Officials help vehicle owners, who turned up at district transport office in Dhanbad on Tuesday oblivious of the new system, with online payment of road tax. (Gautam Dey)

Commercial vehicle owners in Dhanbad will no longer have to go to district transport department office to pay road tax. They can now do it online.

For, state transport department has launched the facility of online payment of road tax for all kinds of commercial and heavy vehicles starting from Tuesday, the first day of the 2014-15 financial year.

With this, the manual system of payment of taxes has been partially discontinued.

Only major defaulters will be allowed to clear their dues manually for a brief period of time. The rest will have to log on to the official website of state transport department, https://vahan.jhr.nic.in/jh/ and do the needful.

According to Dhanbad district transport officer Ravi Raj Sharma, the e-system will prove beneficial to the vehicle owners as it will spare them the ordeal of waiting in long queues to pay the road tax.

“Besides, the online system will help increase revenue as people who were unable to visit the transport department office due to their busy schedules can now pay their tax and also clear past dues, if any, at the click of the mouse from the comfort of their homes,” Sharma said.

The district transport officer added that the facility of online submission of tax would also be made available through 286 Pragya Kendras or Common Service Centres across the district.

The transport department are optimistic that the e-payment mode will reduce the number of defaulters and increase revenue.

“Under the new system, people can pay the road tax even if they are not present in their hometowns,” Sharma added.

In another development, online pre-registration of land and flat also commenced from Tuesday at the registry office in Dhanbad.

Assistant registrar Sahdev Mehra said that people can complete their pre-registration by logging on to http://regd.jharkhand.gov.in/jars/website/

A source in the registry office said that the applicant would have to submit details like location of their land, name of witnesses etc to complete the process.

“Applicants will then have to visit registry office to complete the remaining formalities,” the source added.