It was a beautiful Saturday morning and I just came back from cycling.On reaching home little tired I was asked to get some milk and quite reluctantly I left for the Nandini shop just round the corner. As the luck would have it my purse slipped out of the pocket and unfortunately I never realized. So that is how I lost everything in my purse from DL, Credit & Debit Cards,PAN and some cash. That day milk costed me more than 5K but I was hoping against hope that I may get a call from some honest soul. My lady luck wasn’t that great and so started my journey of getting stuff back. I convinced myself that atleast I can get back all that I lost.Everything else was easy to get except the Driving License.

I decided that day if I get a license without paying any bribe I will write a blog so that it help others who end up like me and here I am happily surprised as I got the license a few hours back.

Here is what you need to do if you lose your driving license. First of all, this works only if you have DL issued in Bangalore. If you have a license that is not issued in Bangalore then all of this will be of no help to you.

First step is to go the Police Station that covers your area. If you are not sure you might have to visit couple of them. But patience is the virtue that you must possess to get work done in government offices in India. So once you get the right place you would need to ask them for acknowledgement regarding the loss of wallet. I went to JP Nagar Police Station and got the acknowledgement without much difficulty. My elder brother was with me and he is well versed with Kannada which always helps. Once you have that acknowledgement you have just cleared the first step.

The second step is get a notarized affidavit letter stating that you have lost your DL. There are many notaries around Bangalore. I went to the ones near Jayanagar 4th Block. They already had a format, printed that on a stamp paper and notarized it. This process took around half an hour and these offices normally open after 10:30. I spent 200 rupees for that.

Both these are the formal letters that you need to have. Now you would need to get a self addressed envelope with 25 rupee stamp on it.

Go to this link and get a printout of form KMV1

http://rto.kar.nic.in/kmv1.pdf

Apart from these you need to provide a photocopy of your old DL, a local address proof. If the present address  is changed then you also need to apply for a change of address and you will get the form outside RTO for 2 rupees.

Once you have all these documents file them up Police Acknowledgement (Original), Affidavit (Original), Filled up KMV1, Address Change form (If required), Self Addressed Envelope with 25 rupees stamp affixed. With all these documents you need to go to the RTO office that issued you original DL. You can use Google Maps to find the office as many times they just shift.

As I already requested patience is the virtue and now you will be entering the RTO Office and you should exhibit that. I went to KA 51 RTO which is now shifted to Devarachikkanahalli from Electronic City and first thing is to get your application verified by the officer at the helpdesk. Once the officer verifies he would sign and you will need to pay the fees in the cash counter. I paid 335 rupees for both duplicate DL and Address Change. Don’t forget to collect your receipt for the paid fees and then proceed to get you application signed by another RTO officer who basically puts one more sign without looking into anything important for sure. This line is lengthiest as everyone needs to get his “Ashirwad” from new LL guys, commercial DL or Duplicate DL. After this you would need to get your biometrics done which should not take much of time. The final update will be done where you will asked to check your particulars. Please double check all your details as any mistake here means your DL will have that mistake. Now again go back to the Frontdesk and most probably they may ask you to get one more signature from Sakala after which submit your file back to frontdesk and collect an acknowledgement from them. This process may differ from each RTO but I believe more or less same.

From the day you submit your file it may take around 1 month which is the normal turnaround time. I got it in around 20 days.

All through the RTO process there will be many lines and there will be many people jumping through it as they are with touts or driving school people. Unless anybody objects they will be going around jumping without any shame. But that’s the nexus between them and it can be cut only when people like us don’t take their services.

I finally got my Duplicate DL without paying any bribe. Things do happen without bribe but it takes little more time and patience.

Hope this helps.

More Links to refer:

http://rto.kar.nic.in/dup-dlcss.html   

https://ipaidabribe.com/how-to/how-get-duplicate-driver%E2%80%99s-licence-karnataka#gsc.tab=0

http://gadiga.blogspot.in/2010/02/getting-duplicate-dl-in-bangalore.html