CHANDIGARH, Dec 3 — When Mr A (not his real name), plying his private car as a tourist vehicle, was challaned for overspeeding, the driving licence he surrendered to the police was a “duplicate” one. The challaning police officer perhaps could not see through the game of Mr A.

“I am lucky I had a duplicate licence today, otherwise they would have impounded my original driving licence. To get an original driving licence would have cost me a minimum of Rs 2,000 ,” remarked Mr A, maintaining that “preparing duplicate copies of a driving licence or even registration certificate was a routine affair for all professional drivers. Otherwise we will end up paying more to the police for traffic offences than what we actually earn.”

“It is easier in the case of laminated documents. We remove the lamination and get photocopies made of the original driving licence and the registration certificate. These photocopies are laminated and even an alert policeman cannot make out an original driving licence from a duplicate one. After photocopying, the original is laminated again. The original documents are seldom produced before police officials,” adds Mr A.

A substantial number of professional drivers, including those of taxis, Matadors, Sumos, light and heavy commercial vehicles, corroborate what Mr A says, claiming that most of them now carry several copies of documents, including their driving licences and registration certificates of their vehicles.

“We have a big problem with these duplicate driving licences and registration certificates,” admits Mr Kuldip Singh, Senior Superintendent of Police, Ludhiana. “Though I do not have the figures, I am sure that a fairly large percentage of more than 30,000 traffic cases pending in the district courts in Ludhiana have duplicate documents in the records. Neither the vehicle owners nor the owners of those driving licences have shown any anxiety or hurry to get their documents back, meaning thereby that they have been managing without the documents they had surrendered to the police sometime earlier.

“This problem has now percolated through to amateur drivers. Most of the college and university boys, who love to drive their two-wheelers without wearing helmets, carry duplicate driving licences. We have no means of finding out which driving licence is original and which is duplicate,” adds Mr Kuldip Singh.

Mr Sukhdev Singh Bhatti, Superintendent of Police (Traffic), Ludhiana, however, maintains that most of the traffic policemen have been trained to differentiate between original and duplicate documents. He referred to a recent instance when someone had submitted a duplicate registration certificate to the challaning officer. “He relented the next day and submitted the original registration certificate when the policeman went to his house,” said Mr Bhatti.

After they are challaned, they submit one of several “duplicate driving licences” they carry with them and  seldom return to appear in the court or pay the fine.

Mr Kuldip Singh says that something on the Chandigarh pattern must be done throughout the country so that each driving licence or registration certificate carries either a “readable chip” or a “water mark” to establish its genuineness.

Many of the truck drivers carry duplicate copies of handwritten diving licences, issued from places like Meerut, Bareilly, Jabalpur and Patna. They also do not return to collect these “seized documents” mainly because they carry the originals with them.