Learner's licence: No takers for messy site

Ludhiana: The facility of filing online applications for learners' licenses has gone astray as people complain about the poorly conceived and maintained webpage of the district transport office.
According to DTO employees, the department received some online applications when the facility was started in December 2014. But over time, the number of applications has gone down drastically.Importantly, the office hasn't received a single online application in the past seven months, they added.
Residents said the site doesn't work properly and makes their task more difficult than helping them. "Most of the times the site (sarthi.nic.in) does not open. Then there is no facility of attaching the scanned documents the online application," said Kintoo Brar, a businessman from Rajguru Nagar.
Pallavi Sharma, a resident of Karimpura, said, "I had to apply for the learners' licence and I was quite excited to know that I could do it online. However, the moment I opened the site to file the application, I realized that there is no provision for depositing the fee online. I couldn't attach scanned documents. And notably, the website had an instruction which said the applicant will have to take a printout and submit it in the district transport office for verification. Thus I gave up the idea of filing online application."
"There are genuine complaints in this regard and we will sort out all these bottlenecks. We may re-launch the service with more facilities including payment gateway and links of online test," said Ludhiana district transport officer Dalwinderjit Singh.