Some overseas licences can be converted to New Zealand driver licences by filling out a form.

A road safety critic says there is no way to tell if many overseas documents used to get New Zealand driver's licences are real.

Drivers with overseas licences can convert them to New Zealand licences by filling out a four-page form.

But a story published by Stuff on Sunday has cast doubt on the robustness of those conversions after it emerged one migrant successfully got through the process with a forged licence.

STUFF India has no national licensing authority, making it difficult to verify licences from the country.

Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of the motoring site dogandlemon.com, said the lack of any national licensing authority in India made it difficult to verify such licences by phone or electronically.

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"The Indian authorities are extremely unco-operative," Matthew-Wilson said.

"There is no way we can tell if they are legit."

A deportation order for migrant Jodhbir Singh was upheld by the Immigration and Protection Tribunal in October.

It said Singh's character had been called into question because he had used a forged licence to obtain his New Zealand driver's licence.

Singh successfully got his New Zealand driver's licence by filling out a standard New Zealand Transport Agency DL5 form, according to the tribunal's decision.

The fraud was only caught when he submitted a copy of his fake Indian licence as part of an unrelated visa application.

Immigration NZ officers visited a regional transport office in Amritsar, Punjab to verify the licence, only to be told it was a fraud and later that Singh had "influenced" its Amritsar office to create fake online information.

Singh was employed as a forklift driver for a New Zealand dairy company.

Unlike New Zealand, India has no central driver licensing authority and licences are issued by states.

India's Minister of Transport, Nitin Gadkari, told the Times of India in September that there were no practical driving tests in many cases.

Gadkari made the comments at a public event in New Delhi while announcing his plans for India's first national driver licence database.

Matthew-Wilson said the way India currently issued driver licences would make it difficult for the NZTA to verify their authenticity,

Similar problems have emerged in Australia with Victoria's road transport authority, VicRoads. The authority declined many Indian truck driver licence conversions until a fast-track verification system with India's consulate was developed, according to reports from SBS Australia.

But the problem of licence verification wasn't limited to India.

Authorities in China maintained a national database but received "millions of enquiries a day" and so answers were often similarly difficult to obtain, Matthew-Wilson said.

"Until we have a reliable system for bringing in licences from China, India and certain other countries we should stop recognising them completely."

NZTA has been approached for comment.