Old cars now have a chance to get smart, thanks to an ambitious car-profiling programme being undertaken by the government to replace nearly 600,000 blue books with computerised cards.
?We will begin issuing the smart cards from June, in exchange of blue books for cars registered with the department,? public vehicles department (PVD) assistant director Manab Chakraborty told Metro on Friday.
?We have made the smart card mandatory for car-owners. They will get their cards in just half-an-hour, on production of their car papers and payment of a fee of Rs 560,? he added.
The smart card, with an embedded chip containing all information relating to an individual vehicle, made its debut in September 2004.
But the present initiative will be a far wider one, touching old or existing private cars and then extending to all types of vehicles.
?We will intensify the drive by early next year,? said PVD director H. Mohan. By a reliable estimate, nearly 600,000 vehicles are registered with the department.
?To begin with, we will issue cards for cars of WB-02F series, followed by WB-02G and WB-02H. We will issue newspaper advertisements informing car-owners about the smart card and which series of vehicles would be taken up when,?? said assistant director Chakraborty.
A software, Vahan, developed by the National Informatics Centre, has gone into the making of the smart cards by Webel. The cards would enable the PVD or traffic police to track a car better.
The PVD has set up a separate office at Chakraberia Road from where the cards will be issued to the car-owners or their representatives.
?We have deployed about 50 employees and adequate security personnel to ensure smooth delivery of cards. We are gearing up to deliver 5,000 smart cards every day,?? said Chakraborty.
The department has also opened a special cell with 30 computers and experts at its Beltala office to verify the car details from the register and feed it into the computer.
?We could have begun issuing cards for the cars of WB-02 or WB-02A series also, but computerisation of the records of the vehicles could not be completed due to the detection of several anomalies in a number of vehicles?? said a PVD official.
