Thiruvananthapuram: The Department of Motor Vehicles (MVD) had recently come up with a new App to nab fraudsters who give fake certificates of vehicle smoke emission test. The introduction of this new app called ‘Pollution Testing with Geo-tagging’ will prevent issuance of fake pollution test certificates by keeping a direct check by the MVD, on the testing procedures.
Geo-tagging is now mandatory at all smoke testing centres. It is the process of appending geographic coordinates to media based on the location of a mobile device. Geotagging has been made mandatory to prevent irregularities in pollution testing of vehicle at smoke testing centres.
From now on, smoke emission test will be done in a licensed building and will be permitted to operate only within 50 meters of the building vicinity. The action is to avoid taking the testing machine to different places. Also, it is found that instead of vehicles that emits smoke, less polluting vehicles are brought for testing.
This is how the App works:
Clear images of the vehicle taken from a fixed distance and that of the vehicle’s number plate should be uploaded in the app by the testing centre. Only after uploading the photos in the app and its verification that will follow, will the emission test start. The MVD will get the information about the vehicle through the app simultaneously. The new system was adopted by MVD when there was an increase in the cases of obtaining fake certificate by sending a photo to the operator’s phone without bringing the vehicle for inspection.
The geo-mapping app developed by the National Informatics Centre was introduced to authorized smoke testing center operators as per the instructions of the Transport Commissioner. The app will be installed to the phones submitted by the smoke testing centres at the RTO of their respective district. This app can be installed to a maximum of three phones at each smoke testing center.
With the help of this new app, the irregularities in the smoke emission testing centres can be monitored and curbed. Only the image of the vehicle that is given clearance in the emission test will be uploaded to the certificate from now on.
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