My experience renewing my West Bengal driving licence at Bangalore RTO

There was not much crowd at the Regional Transport Office and on the two visits, I was never approached by any agent. I think the online process has been streamlined a lot.

BHPian dipdawiz recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Got my WB license renewed in Bangalore KA51 RTO. Took 2 months and 10 days to get the physical license in hand.

• Check which RTO serves your PIN code. Unless you are going through an agent, this is important as RTO would not service your application if it is not on their list.
• Prefer to go via Aadhaar authentication (there is an option for another way to authenticate to submit the application)
• Your medical form 1A should be signed in green color pen by a doctor.
• Though parivahan site says "You do not have to visit RTO", for faster processing you may like to visit RTO once and submit the same documents you uploaded. Without a visit, you do not know whether there is any issue and your application is at the mercy of the officer's mood and whether it would be processed or ignored indefinitely.
• Make sure the photocopy (sign with a blue pen) and then scan all happens in color - while uploading as well as for submitting
• For the rest of the follow up you have to raise a grievance.
• Try to apply at least 2 months before your existing license expires. As there is no SLA for each step of the application process, it is not guaranteed to get DL on time, but looks like 2 months is a safe timeline to assume.

My DL was expiring at Jan end of this year, so in November 2024 I applied to KA01 RTO as it was just 5km from my home. I ignored the notice on the Parivahan site that the postal PIN should be serviceable from a specific RTO. In December end I went to RTO as my status was not moving from "Scrutiny", they specifically mentioned my PIN do not fall under their jurisdiction. They also mentioned the color copy of scanned and signed documents and the doctor's sign in green. Though all the agents "INSIDE and AROUND" said 5~6k would solve all problems and I would get the DL from that same RTO only.

Anyway, I did not want to do that, hence cancelled the application and applied again to the correct RTO (which is 12km from my home) losing the payment of the previous one. This time as soon as I applied, in a day or two I visited the RTO and submitted the document; ARTO signed the application and the original license was taken along with other documents (same one you uploaded). No additional thing asked for out state DL renewal (in this case your application has two sections - Address change and DL renewal).

In around 2 weeks the application was approved, just two days past my old license expired; I could see new details in mParivahan and digilocker. However, another 2 weeks passed the DL did not go for printing. I raised a grievance but it was closed saying "under process". Hence another week later, I visited the RTO again, though looks like it was not required and came to know the contract with the vendor who prints DL was over, unless the contract is renewed, they cannot print anything and asked me to be patient. Anyway, after a week or two printing on form 7 (the physical DL) was done.

Till March 1st week it was not dispatched. I was out of the station, so I did not bother. Once I was back, raised another grievance and this time it was closed with a comment - "approved". And in the next 2 days got an SMS saying the DL has been dispatched with the tracking ID (which was working only after two days) and got it in hand on 4th day from dispatch (there was a weekend in between).

Overall mixed bag experience with the whole process. There was not much crowd at RTO51 and on two visits I was never approached by any agent. I think the online process has been streamlined a lot, only thing is - there is no SLA for each step (like in the case of passport application, visit, verification, print, dispatch etc have some sort of SLA) and no straightforward way to communicate or get an update from RTO. If those are sorted, it would be a seamless experience.

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