eDLVRS Nepal: Your Province's Driving Licence Portal, and Why applydl.dotm.gov.np Stopped Working

If applydl.dotm.gov.np will not load for you, it is not your internet. The site is gone. It does not return an error page — the server simply does not answer.

Nothing national replaced it. On Shrawan 1, 2083, driving licence and vehicle registration services moved to seven separate portals, one per province. The system is called eDLVRS: Electronic Driving Licence and Vehicle Registration System.

So the first question is no longer "what is the website". It is "which province am I in".

The seven portals

All seven were checked and all seven are live. The ministry column is read off each portal's own homepage, because the department that runs your licence is now a provincial ministry, not DOTM in Kathmandu.

Two spellings to copy exactly, because both are easy to get wrong:

edlvrs.bagamati.gov.np        bagAmati, with an extra "a"
edlvrs.sudurpashchim.gov.np   sudurpashchim, "sh" then "chim"

Type them straight into the address bar. Searching for "edlvrs" brings back a lot of copies of the old instructions, and some of those pages look official when they are not.

What each portal actually does

Every one of the seven offers the same six services, worded identically. They are split into two groups.

EDL — driving licence

VRS — vehicles

That second EDL row is the one worth pausing on. Renewal and the lost-licence duplicate are now the same online request. The old advice — that a duplicate means a day at the transport office from the very start — is out of date. You still need the traffic police recommendation first, but the request itself begins on the portal.

How to apply, step by step

1. Open your province portal from the table above.
2. Identify yourself. The portals accept the QR code on your national ID card or the Nagarik App, which fills in your personal details automatically. This is the fastest route and it avoids typing mistakes in your name.
3. Fill in the form. Category, office, personal details, contact number.
4. Pay the revenue online. eSewa, Khalti, ConnectIPS or a bank transfer. Keep the receipt.
5. Book your office appointment. You pick the office and a date. Slots are released in quotas.
6. Go in person for biometrics, the medical check, the written exam and the trial.

Steps 1 to 5 are online. Step 6 is not, and no portal will change that.

About the appointment quota

This is where people get stuck for weeks, so plan around it.

Dates are released in batches per office and per category. When a batch is full, no more dates appear until the next batch opens. Under the old central system the pattern was a 16-day cycle with new quotas at 7 AM, and offices still work in batches like this.

Two practical things follow:

• Check early in the morning, and check on the day a new batch is due.
• A quieter office may have dates when the busy one does not. You choose the office in the form. If your province has more than one and you can travel, look at both before you settle.

What still happens at the office

The portal does not replace the visit. You will still be there for:

• biometrics — photo, thumbprint, digital signature
• document verification against your citizenship
• the medical and eye test, if it was not done at an approved clinic
• the written exam (likhit pariksha, लिखित परीक्षा)
• the trial
• collecting the smart card

There is also a doctor-side portal at doctor.dotm.gov.np. It is for the examining doctor to file your health verification digitally. It is not a page you log into yourself, so do not waste time trying.

If your province portal is down

Government portals in Nepal do go down, usually briefly. Before assuming the worst:

• Check the spelling again, especially bagamati.
• Try a different network. Some ISPs cache a dead DNS record for the old central site and it bleeds into related lookups.
• Try outside office hours. Load is heaviest mid-morning on working days.
• Ask DOTM. The department still publishes notices and takes complaints at gunaso@dotm.gov.np, and the notice announcing this whole change is at dotm.gov.np/content/106/driver-s-license/.

Office hours, if you need to phone or visit: 9 AM to 5 PM Sunday to Friday in summer (Magh 16 to Kartik 15), and 9 AM to 4 PM in winter (Kartik 16 to Magh 15).

What you need before you start the form

Have these ready in a folder on your phone. The form times out, and hunting for a document halfway through means starting again.

If you already hold a licence and are adding a category, bring the existing card as well.

What actually changed, and why it matters

The old system was one website, one queue, one fee schedule for the whole country. The new one is seven of each. That has three consequences people keep running into.

Your fee depends on your province. Since FY 2083/84 each province sets its own. Bagmati, Koshi, Gandaki and Karnali roughly doubled theirs. Madhesh and Lumbini kept the old rates. A national fee table is now wrong by definition — including the ones still sitting at the top of search results.

Your notices come from your province, not DOTM. Exam formats, quota release times and office rules are set provincially. When this series says "check the notice at your own office", that is not a hedge. It is the actual chain of authority now.

Old guides are worse than no guide. A page that names the dead central portal was written before Shrawan 2083. Its fees, its screenshots and its process are all from the previous system. Check the portal address in any guide first — it tells you instantly whether the rest is current.

What did not change: the question bank, the trial stations, the medical standard, and the smart card itself. Those are national, and they are what you actually have to prepare for.

Contacts, and where to find your own office

Since Shrawan 2083 your licence is handled by a provincial ministry, so the right contact depends on where you applied. Use this order.

1. Your province portal. The seven addresses are in the table above. Each portal carries the contact details for the offices it serves, and it is the only source that stays current when an office moves or a number changes.

2. Your local transport office. Its number is published in DOTM's office directory:

dotm.gov.np/category/transport-offices-contacts/

That page is the official list, so use it rather than a number copied onto a blog. Office phone numbers in Nepal do get reassigned, and a wrong number costs you a morning.

3. The Department of Transport Management, for anything national — the smart card, print lists, or a complaint.

DOTM posts its notices as they are issued, including the batch lists of printed licences, so it is worth checking before you phone anyone. How to read the print lists.

The official documents, if you want the source

Everything in this series is checked against these rather than against other blogs.

Common mistakes

• Following a guide that names applydl.dotm.gov.np. It is dead. If a page still tells you to use it, that page has not been updated since 2082 and you should not trust its fee figures either.
• Applying in the wrong province. Apply where you will sit the exam.
• Assuming fees are the same everywhere. They are not, not since FY 2083/84. Each province sets its own now.
• Paying on a site that is not a gov.np address. Every real portal ends in .gov.np. Nothing else is official.
• Booking a date and forgetting the documents. Bring the original citizenship, not a photocopy.

Practise while you wait for your date

The gap between applying and your appointment is usually the longest part of this whole process. It is also the only free time you will get to prepare.

Use it on the question bank. The likhit is drawn from a published set of about 500 DOTM questions, so it is one of the few exams where covering everything is genuinely possible. I built Yatayat Likhit for exactly that gap: the full bank with explanations, timed mocks in the real format, the road signs, and an Ishihara-style colour-vision test so the medical is not a surprise. It is free, works offline, and is in both Nepali and English.

Get it: Yatayat Likhit — free on iPhone and Android. The link opens your own app store.

Questions people ask

What is eDLVRS?

Electronic Driving Licence and Vehicle Registration System. It is the online system that replaced DOTM's central portal on Shrawan 1, 2083, with one site per province.

Why can I not open applydl.dotm.gov.np?

Because it was retired. The host does not respond at all now. Use your province portal instead.

Which province portal should I use if I live and work in different provinces?

Use the province where you will actually take the exam and collect the card. That is normally where you live now, not your permanent address.

Can I do the whole licence process online?

No. Application, payment and booking are online. Biometrics, medical, written exam, trial and card collection are all in person.

Is the duplicate for a lost licence really online now?

The request is. Each portal lists "नवीकरण तथा प्रतिलिपि अनुरोध" as one service. You still need the traffic police recommendation before you file it.

Keep reading

• The complete licence guide — every step in order, if you are starting from zero.
• What the likhit question bank asks — the best use of your waiting time.
• What a licence costs now — why the fee tables you are reading disagree.
• Lost your licence? — the pratilipi route, now that it starts online.
• Transport office contacts — every office site and email.
• Age limits and documents — what to have ready before the form.
• Renewal and the 35-day grace period — before you get fined for being late.