Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill, 2016 approved by Union Cabinet

Union Cabinet on 3 August 2016 gave its approval to Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill, 2016. The amendment seeks to improve road safety in the country.

The bill proposes to increase penalties against traffic violations to as deterrent measure.

Highlights of the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016
Amendments, Deletion, Replacement and Insertion
• It aims to amend 68 sections of the existing Motor Vehicle Act that carries 223 sections.
• It seeks to delete chapter 10 of the existing act.
• It seeks to replace Chapter 11 with new provisions to simplify third party insurance claims and settlement process.
• It proposes insertion of 28 new sections.

Compensation
• It increases compensation for Hit & Run cases to 2 lakh rupees from 25000 rupees.
• It also has provision for payment of compensation up to 10 lakh rupees in road accidents fatalities.

Role of the States
• It proposes to improve the transport scenario in the country by permitting states to grant exemptions in stage carriage and contract permits for promoting rural transport, public transport, and last mile connectivity and for passenger convenience and road safety.
• It proposes that the state government can specify a multiplier, not less than one and not greater than ten, to be applied to each fine under this Act and such modified fine.
• It proposes that the state government can regulate the activities in a public place of pedestrians and such means of transport.
E-Governance
• One of its major focuses includes improving delivery of services to the stakeholders using e-governance. These services include enabling online learning licenses, increase of validity period for driving licenses, and others.

Juvenile’s offence
• It proposes that guardian or owner will be deemed to be guilty in cases of offences by the Juveniles.
• Juvenile to be tried under Juvenile Justice (Care And Protection Of Children) Act, 2015.
• Registration of Motor Vehicle to be cancelled.

Road safety
• It proposes to increase penalties to act as deterrent against traffic violations.
• Stricter provisions are being proposed in respect of offences like juvenile driving, drunken driving, driving without licence, dangerous driving, over-speeding, overloading etc.
• Stricter provisions for helmets have been introduced along with provisions for electronic detection of violations.
• To help the road accident victims, Good Samaritan guidelines have been incorporated in the Bill.

“Vahan” & “Sarathi” platforms
• It proposes to create National Register for Driving Licence and National Register for Vehicle registration through “Vahan” & “Sarathi” platforms. This would help on brining uniformity in registration and licensing process across the country.

Other features
• To improve the registration process for new vehicles, registration at the end of the dealer is being enabled
• Restrictions have been imposed on temporary registration.
• The Bill also proposes to mandate the automated fitness testing for the transport vehicles with effect from 1 October 2018. This would reduce corruption in the Transport Department while improving the road worthiness of the vehicle.
• The penalties are also proposed for deliberate violation of safety/environmental regulations as well as body builders and spare part suppliers.
• The process for testing and certification for automobiles is proposed to be regulated more effectively. The testing agencies issuing automobile approvals have been brought under the ambit of the Act.
• The driving training process has been strengthened enabling faster issuance of transport licenses. This will help in reducing the shortage of commercial drivers in the country.
• To facilitate transport solutions for Divyang, the bottlenecks have been removed in respect of grant of driving licenses as well as alterations in the vehicles to make it fit for use of Divyang.

Background
The approved Bill is based on the recommendations of Group of Transport Ministers (GoM) headed by Yoonus Khan, the Transport Minister of Rajasthan. Earlier, the Union Ministry of Road Transport & Highways constituted a GoM to address the issue of road safety and to improve the facilitation of the citizens while dealing with transport departments.

A total of 18 Transport Ministers from different political parties participated in three meetings and submitted three interim reports.