eSRT has immensely simplified the entire process of paying the monthly Special Road Tax for commercial vehicles in the state of Himachal Pradesh. With the entire process online the vehicle owners can make their payments directly from their smartphones.

To ply buses (Stage Carriage Vehicle) in the state of Himachal Pradesh, it is mandatory to obtain a Stage Carriage Permit, which is issued by the HP Transport Department. All Stage carriage permit holders are required to pay a monthly tax known as Special Road Tax (SRT).

The SRT is a monthly prepaid tax calculated using a formula based on parameters like seating capacity of buses, road type on which the bus will ply (National Highway, State Highway etc), distance covered, type of the buses (Ordinary, Deluxe and Semi Deluxe) etc.

E-SRT SOFTWARE SOLUTION The eSRT is an initiative of HP Transport Department and NIC Himachal Pradesh for facilitating online issuance of new Stage vehicle carriage route permits and online payment of monthly Special Road Tax. Using eSRT web application, Permit Routes are finalised by adding stations and assigning arrival and departure timing corresponding to every route station. Once route is finalised, the route permits are issued. Thereafter, eSRT application auto calculates monthly tax using SRT formulae.

The application has facility for paying monthly tax online using Himachal Pradesh Cyber Treasury portal without visiting to RTO office. It also allows other provisions like Penalty Calculations, instalment payments, and various exemptions as per provisions of Transport Department.

In addition to standard MIS reports, various other Dynamic reports have been made available for different enforcement agencies that are effectively using these reports for tracking tax defaulters.

The eSRT software, developed by NIC Himachal, has helped in the recovery of road tax arrears and increased the tax collection figures by almost 4.5 times. The mobile app is facilitating the transporters in keeping track of their road tax payments. — Dr. Sunil Chaudhary, IAS Commissioner, Transport, Government of Himachal Pradesh

E-SRT MOBILE APP For issuance of Route permits, the RTO authorities capture the owner and vehicle detail followed by formation of route by addition of requested stations with arrival and departure timings. These formed routes are sent to RTO authorities for final approval electronically. In case route requires permissions from other RTOs, then countersign request is sent electronically.

After the issuance of Route Permit, the application auto-calculates SRT on 1st day of every month and starts accumulating penalty on daily basis after 15th day of every month. With due approval of RTO/directorate authority, the application takes care of day wise special tax exemptions provisions in case the vehicle has not travelled due to adverse climatic conditions or any other reasons.

For online payment, tax payers gets registered in http://admis.hp.nic.in/pathkar/ with login id and password. Now tax payers pay their monthly SRT tax online using Cyber Treasury options integrated with eSRT. On mobile platform, the users can pay their tax online by downloading the eSRT HP Android mobile App from Google Play Store and the home pages of the Himachal Government and HP Transport Department websites.

MILESTONES • Issued 4732 Stage Carriage Vehicle Permits by 10 RTO authorities for Private Owners of Buses and Himachal Pradesh Roadways fleet • Approx. Rs 52.47 Core Special Road Tax has been collected through eSRT application, since its implementation in April, 2014.

TECHNOLOGY USED The eSRT Application has been developed using ASP.Net with MS SQL Server as backend database. The Android Mobile App has been developed using eclipse IDE, Java language and for local storage SQLite has been used.

WAY FORWARD It is proposed to include automatic issuance of Route Permits by optimizing and analyzing the timings of various vehicles at a particular Station/Stop. The administrative simplification of the calculation of Special Road Tax, which is very complex process at present, shall be implemented. The mobile application, eSRT, will be enhanced by integrating the payment gateway and making it available in Windows and iOS platforms.