Won’t pass diesel pain to commuters: Minister

Addressing the media, while inaugurating a new online payment system to enable the applicants of driver’s licence to carry out net banking at the RTO office in KK Nagar, the minister also said 475 new buses will be added to the State’s fleet next week. 

“The buses will be flagged off by the Chief Minister. The State will also soon receive 100 electric buses, of which 80 will be allocated to Chennai and the rest to Coimbatore. The new vehicles will hit the road in near future,” Vijayabhaskar said.

Regarding the State topping the chart in terms of highest number of road accidents, the Minister said, “We are taking all the efforts to reduce the road accidents. We included road safety in the school curriculum and are going to introduce Road Safety Clubs, apart from conducting awareness programmes.” 

Meanwhile, an official said the department has introduced a new feature enabling the driver licence applicants to pay the designated fees through net banking or credit/debit card or submit an acknowledgement receipt to the SBI and pay via cash. This comes a year after introducing the provision of online application.

The new technology was developed in association with the National Informatics Centre (NIC). This facility will be available across 86 RTOs and 56 branch units in the State. The applicants can carry out online payment in the website: https://parivahan.gov.in/parivahan/ Regarding the e-buses, the official pointed that a minimum of three months was required to set up the required infrastructure along the important routes. “We can expect e-buses to ply on the city roads in the next three months. A consultative study to deliberate on various issues including potential routes is underway,” he said.