How to Apply for Smart Driving License Online in Nepal (Step-by-Step DoTM Guide)

If you searched for this a year ago, you would have been told to open applydl.dotm.gov.np, create an account with your citizenship number, and pick an exam date from a national calendar. That advice is now wrong, and it is still the advice on most of the pages ranking for this topic. The central portal is gone. Since Shrawan 1, 2083 (17 July 2026), the driving licence application has run on EDLVRS, the Electronic Driving Licence and Vehicle Registration System, and EDLVRS is not one national website. Each of the seven provinces runs its own portal on its own government domain, sets its own fees, and manages its own appointment quota.

This guide covers the smart licence application as it works now: which portal belongs to you, what you fill in online, what still has to happen in person at the transport office, what the written exam and the trial actually test, what it costs in your province, and how long the smart card takes to reach your hand. Where a figure varies by province or by office, it says so, because this is an area where a stale number wastes a trip to Ekantakuna.

What changed, in one paragraph

Three things moved at once. The application system became provincial instead of national, so the URL you use depends on where you live. The National ID became the identity anchor for licence services, replacing citizenship-number-first registration, with QR scan or Nagarik App login pulling your details straight from the government database. And the fee schedule stopped being a single national table, because each province now sets its own rates through its own economic bill. Everything after the online form, the biometrics, the medical check, the written exam, the trial and the card collection, still happens in person at a transport management office exactly as before.

Step 1: Open the EDLVRS portal for your province

Use the portal for the province where you want to sit the exam and collect the card, which in practice is the province you live in. An application filed on one province's portal cannot be transferred to another province's office.

Note the spelling of the Bagmati domain. It is bagamati, with the extra "a", not bagmati. That single letter sends a large number of people to a parked page or a lookalike, and it is the most common wrong turn in the whole process.

Every EDLVRS portal opens with two service blocks:

1. EDL, विद्युतीय सवारी चालक अनुमतिपत्र. New licence application, renewal, duplicate copy request and category addition.
2. VRS, सवारी दर्ता प्रणाली. Vehicle registration, road tax payment and ownership transfer. Not what you want here.

Choose EDL, then अगाडि बढ्नुहोस् to proceed.

Ignore any site that is not on a gov.np domain. Several private sites rank well for "online driving license Nepal", mirror the government form layout, and charge a service fee for something the state does for free. They cannot file your application. Only a gov.np portal can.

Step 2: Verify your identity

The National ID (राष्ट्रिय परिचयपत्र) is now compulsory for driving licence services. You have two ways to satisfy it:

• Scan the QR code on your National ID card with the portal's scanner.
• Log in through the Nagarik App, which authenticates you against the same national database.

Either route auto-fills your full name, date of birth, permanent and temporary address, and citizenship details. This matters more than it sounds. Under the old system the single largest cause of rejected applications and re-printed cards was a name or date-of-birth mismatch between what the applicant typed and what the citizenship record held. Auto-fill removes the typing, and with it the mismatch.

If you do not have a National ID yet, apply for one before starting. Registration is free, runs through the District Administration Office and periodic ward-level camps, and the NIN is issued well before the physical card. On most portals the NIN alone is enough to proceed.

You will also need a Nepali mobile number registered in your own name. Every OTP, appointment reminder and status message goes there, and a number in a relative's name is a problem later when you need to reset access.

Step 3: Choose your category

Pick one category per application. Adding a second category later is a separate, cheaper transaction, not a fresh application.

Two practical points. Category B does not include a motorcycle, so if you ride and drive you need both A and B, and most people take A first because it is the cheaper and faster trial. The heavy categories are not open to a first-time applicant: G through J expect an existing light-vehicle licence and driving experience behind it.

Step 4: Fill the form and upload documents

With identity verified, the form itself is short. What it asks for, beyond the auto-filled block:

• Blood group
• Height and any identifying mark
• Emergency contact name and number
• Current occupation
• Whether you hold an existing licence, and its number if you do

Then the uploads. Scan or photograph these before you sit down, because the session times out and a half-finished form is not saved on every portal:

• Citizenship certificate, both sides, clear and readable
• National ID card or NIN slip
• Passport-size photograph, white background, recent
• Blood group report from a registered lab
• Existing licence, only if you are adding a category or renewing

Keep every scan under the size limit the portal states, usually a few hundred kilobytes, and use JPG or PDF. An oversized upload fails silently on some provincial portals and leaves the application stuck at "incomplete" with no error shown.

The online half takes 20 to 30 minutes when the documents are ready in advance. It takes an evening when they are not.

Step 5: Pick your transport office and book a date

Select the transport management office where you will do biometrics and exams, then choose a date from the quota calendar. Two things to know about the calendar:

• Quota is released in batches, not continuously. In Bagmati, dates open Sunday through Wednesday, roughly 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM, excluding public holidays. Popular offices in Kathmandu Valley fill their released quota within minutes of it opening.
• The date you book is a real commitment. Missing it does not roll over. On most portals you forfeit the slot and rebook from the back of the queue, and on some you forfeit the paid revenue with it.

If your preferred office shows nothing available, check the neighbouring offices in the same province before waiting a week. In Bagmati that means comparing Ekantakuna, Chabahil, Thulo Bharyang, Jagati in Bhaktapur, Hetauda and Bharatpur. A ninety minute bus ride to an office with open quota beats three weeks of refreshing a calendar.

Step 6: Pay the revenue online

Pay the application revenue (राजस्व) through the payment options the portal shows. Digital wallets and bank transfer are the normal routes, and where online payment is not enabled for a given service the portal tells you to pay at the office counter instead.

Save the receipt. Download the PDF, screenshot the confirmation, and take a printout to the office. A payment that the portal has recorded but you cannot evidence at the counter is a wasted morning.

Print the completed application slip as well, and attach a passport photo to it if the portal instructs you to.

Step 7: Biometrics and document verification at the office

Arrive at your booked office on your booked date, with originals of everything you uploaded. Offices generally run Sunday to Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and the biometric queue is front-loaded, so early is better.

At this visit the office will:

1. Verify your original citizenship certificate and National ID against the application on screen.
2. Take your photograph, all ten fingerprints and your digital signature. This is the biometric enrolment, and it is the record that gets printed on the smart card.
3. Run the medical check, which in practice is a vision test. The threshold applied at most offices is 0.5 vision in both eyes, corrected or uncorrected. If you wear glasses or lenses, wear them, and expect a "must wear corrective lenses" condition to be recorded on your licence.

Check the spelling of your name and your date of birth on the screen before you sign off. Correcting a printed smart card means a duplicate request, a fresh fee and another wait. Correcting it at this desk takes thirty seconds.

Step 8: The written exam (likhit)

The likhit is objective. Multiple choice, four options per question, no descriptive writing, taken at a computer terminal at most offices, with a small number of offices still using printed OMR sheets. You can switch the question language between Nepali and English at the terminal, so read in whichever you process faster.

The pattern DoTM has published is 25 questions of 4 marks each, out of 100, with 60 the pass mark, drawn from the department's official public bank of 500 objective questions. Some offices have run slightly different counts and time limits, and the department has revised the pattern more than once, so confirm the current format for your office when you collect your exam date. What has not changed is the subject mix: traffic signs, road rules and right of way, road safety and defensive driving, basic vehicle mechanics, and a small block on law, documents, penalties, first aid and environment.

Signs are the largest single block and the easiest marks on the paper, because they are pure recall. Learn the shape and colour grammar first and you can answer a large share of them without recognising the specific symbol: a red circle means prohibition, a blue circle means a compulsory instruction, a red triangle means warning, and a blue rectangle means information.

The result appears on the terminal immediately. If you fail, you rebook the written exam and pay the exam revenue again. A pass carries forward to the trial, and you do not repeat the likhit if you later fail the practical.

For the full subject-wise question bank in Nepali with answers, see DoTM Driving License Likhit Exam: 500 Model Questions and Answers.

Step 9: The trial (practical test)

This is where most candidates fail, not the likhit.

Since 1 April 2025 the practical runs on a 100 point marking sheet with 70 required to pass, and the course is divided into seven scored stations. The point split below is the pattern published when the system was introduced. Individual offices apply it with small variations, so treat it as the shape of the test rather than a guarantee.

Two wheeler course, category A and K

Four wheeler course, category B

The car course is scored on the same seven-station, 100 point sheet, with the stations adapted to a vehicle:

• Figure of eight, again the heaviest station at 20 points, and again the one that ends most attempts. A car is allowed to touch the boundary line twice before disqualification, where a bike is allowed once.
• Garage or L-shaped reverse parking, the tight reverse into a marked bay. This trips up more candidates than any other single station on the car course.
• Ramp, 20 points, with automatic disqualification if the vehicle stops beyond the marked boundary, fails to reach it, crosses it, or stalls on the slope.
• Lane driving, signal obedience and a controlled stop, checking that you hold a lane, indicate, and stop where told.

The marking starts before you move. You lose about 3 points for not checking mirrors, tyres and brakes before setting off, and about 4 points for not fastening your seat belt. Those are seven points given away by a candidate who can drive perfectly well.

Entering the track from the wrong side, or crossing a marked yellow line, is an immediate disqualification on both courses regardless of your running score.

Re-trial. A failed trial is rebooked and re-paid, and offices apply a limit on attempts within a fixed window after your written pass, commonly three attempts. Exhaust them and you start the application again. If the office provides the trial vehicle rather than you bringing your own, expect a vehicle token charge of roughly Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 on the day.

Step 10: Pay the licence fee and collect the smart card

Passing the trial is not the end. You pay the licence issuance fee for your category, and your record goes into the national print queue.

You will be issued a temporary slip carrying your licence number. That slip is legally valid to drive with inside Nepal until the physical card is issued. Keep it with you and keep it intact, because a torn or laundered slip is a traffic stop you do not want.

Printing has historically been the slowest part of the process, with backlogs measured in months rather than weeks. The department has been clearing a very large accumulated print backlog through 2083, and the position is better than it was, but plan on driving with the temporary slip for a while.

Checking whether your card is printed

Three ways, in order of reliability:

1. The DoTM printed-licence lists. On dotm.gov.np, open the printed licence section, download the PDF for your province and office, and search it for your name or application number. The lists are republished every few weeks.
2. SMS. Send LC <your licence number> to 31003 from any NTC or Ncell number. A small charge applies.
3. Your provincial EDLVRS account. Log in and check the application status dashboard.

Your licence number reads as PP-OO-NNNNNNNN: two digits for province, two for the issuing office, eight for the serial.

Once the list shows your card as printed, collect it in person at the office that took your biometrics, with your citizenship certificate and the application receipt.

What it costs

Fees are provincial now. The table below is the schedule set for fiscal year 2083/84 (2026/27), as reported across the seven provinces in July 2026. Bagmati doubled every licence fee in its Economic Bill 2083, and the other provinces converged near the same rates, so the old "Rs. 500 plus Rs. 1,500" numbers still circulating online are simply the previous schedule.

On top of the government fee, budget for the incidentals: a blood group report at Rs. 100 to Rs. 200, the medical and biometric charge of roughly Rs. 55 to Rs. 150 depending on office, and the trial vehicle token of Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 if you use the centre's vehicle.

The figure that binds is the one your portal shows during your application. Provincial economic bills are revised annually with the fiscal year, and any table published on a blog, including this one, is a snapshot.

Validity, renewal and adding a category

Validity is 10 years. The Motor Vehicles and Transport Management Act, 2049 was amended to replace "five years" with "ten years" in sections 54(3) and 56(3), published in the Nepal Gazette and in effect for licences issued and renewed since. Holders above 60 years of age continue on a 5 year cycle. Some official FAQ pages still carry the old five-year wording; the date printed on your card and recorded in the system is the one that governs, so read it before you leave the counter.

Renewal runs through the same EDLVRS portal, under the renewal and duplicate service on the EDL menu, followed by an in-person visit for updated biometrics and the medical check. Renew inside the grace window after expiry and there is no penalty. Past it, fines scale with how long you have been late. A licence left expired for years risks cancellation, at which point you reapply from the beginning, written exam and trial included.

Adding a category to a licence you already hold is a distinct service, priced at Rs. 750 to Rs. 1,000 for light categories and Rs. 2,000 for heavy ones. You still sit the trial for the new category, but you do not repeat the whole application.

How long the whole thing takes

There is no single answer, but a realistic sequence for a first-time category A or B applicant, assuming you pass both exams first time:

The two variables you can control are how fast you get a date, which is a matter of being on the portal when quota opens and being flexible about which office, and whether you pass the trial first time, which is a matter of practising the eight, the ramp and the plank on an actual trial-spec course rather than on a road.

Mistakes that cost people a month

• Typing bagmati instead of bagamati. Wrong domain, no application.
• Using the wrong province's portal because a friend sent the link. Your application belongs to the province where you will test.
• Applying without a National ID or NIN. It is now compulsory and there is no workaround at the counter.
• A mobile number in someone else's name. Every OTP and notification goes there.
• Missing the booked date. The slot does not roll over and the revenue may not either.
• Not checking name spelling and date of birth at the biometric desk. Thirty seconds there, or a duplicate request and a fresh fee later.
• Turning up to the trial having practised only on roads. The eight, the plank and the ramp are course skills, not driving skills, and they are what the sheet scores.
• Trusting a fee table older than Shrawan 2083. The rates roughly doubled.

Frequently asked questions

Can I complete the entire driving licence process online in Nepal?

No. EDLVRS moves the application, category selection, appointment booking, fee payment, renewal and category addition online. Biometric enrolment, the medical check, the written exam, the practical trial and card collection all require you to be physically present at your transport management office.

The old portal applydl.dotm.gov.np does not load. Is that a problem on my end?

No. The central DoTM application portal has been retired. The provincial EDLVRS portals listed above are the only route now. Any guide still pointing at the old address predates Shrawan 2083.

Is the National ID really mandatory?

Yes, it has been made compulsory for driving licence services. The QR scan or Nagarik App login pulls your verified details onto the form. If you do not hold one, register through your District Administration Office first.

How many questions are on the written exam and what is the pass mark?

The published pattern is 25 questions at 4 marks each, out of 100, with 60 to pass, drawn from DoTM's public bank of 500 questions. Offices have run minor variations, so confirm the current format when you collect your exam date.

What score do I need in the trial?

70 out of 100 on the practical marking sheet, under the system in force since 1 April 2025.

How many times can I retake the trial?

Offices commonly allow up to three attempts within a fixed window after your written pass, each rebooked and re-paid. Exhaust them and you reapply from the start.

Can I drive while waiting for the smart card?

Yes. The temporary slip issued after you pay the licence fee, carrying your licence number, is valid for driving inside Nepal until the physical card is issued.

How long is a new smart licence valid?

10 years for holders under 60 at issue, 5 years for holders above 60.

Can I apply in one province and collect in another?

No. The application, the exams and the card all belong to the province whose portal you applied through.

Do I need a driving school certificate?

It is not a legal requirement for the application. It is a practical one for the trial, because the eight, the ramp, the plank and the L-reverse are course-specific skills that ordinary road driving does not teach.

Verify before you travel

This guide reflects the EDLVRS system as it stood in September 2026. Three things move faster than any published guide: provincial fee schedules, which change with each fiscal year's economic bill; appointment quota rules, which each office adjusts; and the written exam pattern, which DoTM has revised more than once. Confirm all three on your own provincial portal, or at your office's information desk, before you commit to a date or hand over money.