UP, Delhi To Get Smart Cards For Vehicle Registration
Sibabrata Das, Financial Express, October 09, 2003

When Vishnu Patel lost his car two years back in Ahmedabad, there was very little that the old system of vehicle registration could do to protect him. The person who stole his Maruti Zen could easily manipulate the manual registration certificate (RC) book and dupe a buyer.

Today, Mr. Patel can breathe easy as he has obtained a smart optical card for his vehicle registration. He can, perhaps, not stop his new vehicle from getting stolen again. But for the person who stole the car, it won’t be easy to find a buyer. He will have to approach the Regional Transport Office (RTO) for transfer of ownership. But the smart card will detect the history of owners.

“The information will be in the server and the smart card. With the chassis or the car number, you will get the entire history of the vehicle’s owners,” said CA Satyam ASP Pvt. Ltd. General Manager, Projects, Anil Makhija. CA Satyam is one of the technology partners for the project.

The RTO district offices will be connected to the Transport Commissioner’s (TC) office and data will be periodically updated to the central server. The connectivity can be through dial up or leased lines. The TC office is connected to the Internet on leased line for various purposes including inquiry generation and information data. A central server sits in the TC office.

The same process of uploading data is adopted in case of blacklisted vehicles. “Information is not mission critical. The uploading of data is done periodically,” said Mr. Makhija.

The states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Nagaland have decided to implement smart cards for vehicle registration certification. Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have gone in for issuance of smart card for driving licenses while Rajasthan and Punjab are at the tendering stage.

The contracts for Maharashtra and Gujarat, which are bagged by Shonkh Technologies, are on Build, Own, Operate, Transfer (BOOT) basis. Delhi is on a Build, Own, Operate (BOO) basis. The order for Maharashtra is for issuance of 10 million cards over 15 years, worth Rs 350 crores. In Gujarat, six million cards will be issued and the value of the project is Rs 180 crores. Cards are already being issued in the state and have reached a total of 1.75 lakh. Delhi is a Rs 148 crores contract for issuance of 40 lakh smart optical card-based electronic registration books.

The technology partners for the project in Maharashtra and Gujarat are Gemplus and Schlumberger for the smart card, Lasercard Systems Corporation for the optical strip, and CA Satyam as the implementation partner. The project in Delhi is being implemented in partnership with Virgo Soft Pvt. Ltd.

The technology requirement is a common platform to ensure interoperability. The standard operating system is SCOSTA (Smart Card Operating System for Transport Applications). The backend software is Vahan for vehicle registration. Sarathi is for driving licenses.

However, there are technology adoptions. Different states have different number of regional transport offices. Connectivity requirement will also vary. While some places will have leased lines, others will be on dial ups or VSATs.

What is the cycle of technology process? The chip card is put together into the card body. After that, the picture is put in and the applications developed to customize the card to make it compatible with the hand-held reader.

“Data is entered first, before putting it through the personalization process. The photograph is captured. The fingerprint of the vehicle owner, his signature, biometrics and the chassis number are put into the optical card and the chip,” said Mr. Makhija.

Simultaneously, all the data is uploaded to a central server. The MIS report consists of information like the stolen vehicles category of registration and collection. The enforcement department has handheld readers. The smart optical card is inserted into the handheld reader for data that the enforcement authorities require.

“Since SCOSTA is the standard operating system, various applications can be built into it,” Mr. Makhija said further.