National permit vehicles can now ply without two drivers

The Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways has announced that the national permit vehicles can now ply without two drivers.

Besides that, for national permit vehicles the requirements of having a dark brown body colour and having two drivers have been done away with.

"The words 'National Permit or N/P' shall be inscribed in the front and rear of the vehicles in bold letters. In the case of trailers, the words 'N/P' shall be inscribed on the rear and left side of the vehicle. The body of a tanker carrying dangerous or hazardous goods shall be painted in white colour and shall display the class label," read a statement from the ministry.

Furthermore, making amendments in rule 62 of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR), the ministry further stated that from now onward the renewal of fitness in respect of transport vehicles will be every two years for vehicles up to eight years old and one year for vehicles older than eight years.

The renewal of fitness was every year earlier. "No fitness certification shall be required at the time of registration for new transport vehicle sold as fully built vehicle and such vehicle shall be deemed to be having a certificate of fitness for a period of two years from the date of registration. These measures would ease the transport sector of the regulatory requirements and would help to reduce corruption and increase the efficiency of the sector," the statement read.

Under rule 138B, now the goods carriage vehicles cannot carry goods openly, the ministry stated. "They can carry in the closed body or within covers like tarpaulin, etc. This was a cause of nuisance when vehicles carrying say construction material, garbage, etc were moving without covers," the statement added.

It further stated that the production of documents like registration, insurance, fitness, permit and driving licence to the enforcement authorities on their asking can now under the CMVR be in electronic form also, under rule 139.

"This will be very beneficial for a common citizen in this age of mobiles and IT. The citizens are now not required to carry documents in physical form while driving. Although under the IT Act 2000 the document in electronic form was prescribed, enforcement authorities were still pressing for physical documents as per CMVR," the ministry said.