Consignment distance in km, used by NIC to compute EWB validity. Pass 0 to let NIC auto-calculate the pin-to-pin road distance from the source and destination pincodes (recommended when the exact road distance is unknown). Any non-zero value is validated against NIC's pin-to-pin reference and is rejected if it deviates beyond NIC's tolerance (≈10% above the calculated value) with "The distance between the pincodes given is too high". For a small number of pincode pairs NIC has not mapped, 0 is rejected with "The distance between the given pincodes are not available in the system. Please provide distance". Retry with the actual road distance (a positive value up to 4000 km; NIC accepts your value on these unmapped routes). The field is mandatory; omitting it returns "Invalid Approximate Distance". The applied distance is returned on generation and on Get E-Way Bill.