Indian government integrates DigiLocker with driving licence and vehicle registration certificates
One of the key services introduced by our Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Digital India campaign. Launched on July 2, 2015, the campaign primarily intends to bring about transparent governance and ensure that government services are available to citizens on mobile devices. As a part of the Digital India campaign, the prime minister introduced DigiLocker in July 2015.
As the name suggests, it is a digital platform which allows documents and certificates to be issued and verified. Upon creating a DigiLocker account, individuals get access to a dedicated cloud storage space for their documents. The Government of India has now integrated DigiLocker with driving licenses and vehicle registration certificates.
This integration means Indian citizens no longer need to carry physical copies of their driving license and vehicle registration certificate to show to traffic police or law enforcement agencies. They can instead show the digital copies of the same via the DigiLocker app for verification of identity and vehicle ownership. The digital copies can also be shared with other government bodies and departments as the proof of identity and address.
After signing up for DigiLocker, one needs to download the DigiLocker Android app from Google Play. In the app one needs to go to the issued documents section and then tap the driving license/vehicle registration certificate section. The traffic police can do offline verification of the documents using QR code. The government has stated that apart from the mobile view version, digitally signed documents can also be accessed electronically, and these will be at par with the physical issued documents as per IT Act 2000.
This app was jointly launched by Nitin Gadkari, minister of road transport and highways and shipping along with Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister of electronics and information technology and law and justice. In an official release, the government has stated that "besides being convenient for people, this will also result in assured authenticity of such documents and reduction of administrative overhead".
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has begun digitising driving licenses and vehicle registration certificates and is maintaining a National Register System (NRS) for the same. Already over nine crore driving licenses and 19 crore vehicle registration certificates have been integrated with DigiLocker. As soon as the data from the remaining regional transport offices are updated in the NRS, their digital copies will be available on DigiLocker.
As per official data, DigiLocker has 21,26,332 registered users with 24,11,702 uploaded documents and has issued over 4,26,73,232 documents as on September 01, 2016.
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