The IT-based services rendered for the public by the Motor Vehicle Department (MVD), including the printing of driving licenses and vehicle registration certificates, are likely to be disrupted from March 1 as the Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT), an autonomous body under the Department of Electronics and IT that offers facility management services for the MVD, informed the MVD that all the facility management services would be suspended from March 1, with the agency withdrawing the staff deployed for this purpose.
The decision to suspend the services was taken by the C-DIT in the wake of the MVD’s reluctance to clear the pending arrears with the C-DIT for providing the facility management services. The MVD is liable to pay a whopping service charge of ₹6.58 crore to the C-DIT since January 2023. As per the conditions of the agreement signed between the two agencies, the payment has to be given within 15 days of providing service, recalled a letter written by the C-DIT to the MVD.
Interestingly, the MVD department has been collecting user fees from the public for providing IT-based services, pointing out the issue of a lack of funds with the department to set up the required infrastructure for delivering various services. This user fee collected from the public would run into crores of rupees over the years, and the pending arrears are not a significant amount compared to the quantum of user fees collected by the MVD from the public annually, according to sources.
