How many times have you been caught by the traffic police and asked to produce the vehicle’s documents? And how many times have you had a traffic police challan issued because you forgot to keep the documents with you? If this has happened with you many times, then the government of India has brought a digitised solution for you in the form of the DigiLocker app, under their Digital India initiative. The DigiLocker is a platform that is a “digital locker” for people and enables them to securely save all their documents in the “vault” on the platform. So instead of carrying physical paperwork, people can access their documents and use them for official purposes with DigiLocker.
The platform works by making the user sign up to create a DigiLocker account, which is exclusively linked to their Aadhar or their UIDAI number. DigiLocker has been curated so that documents and certificates can be issued and verified online with no need of actual paper being used. The DigiLocker platform is available on web as well as on mobile application, and has different government departments and organizations registered with it. Different state governments, central government departments, educational boards, banking and insurance providers, health and medical institutions, etc, are registered with DigiLocker and can push electronic copies of documents and certificates issued by them to the concerned user’s locker. DigiLocker also has the provision of electronic signatures with the help of the eSign facility.
The general working principle of DigiLocker is simple: the user needs to sign up on the DigiLocker platform, and get their account synced with their Aadhar or their UIDAI number. The platform then gets all relevant documents from various issuing institutions and authorities, which are then shared with the requesters. The documents are then verified by the requesters and are then pushed into the user’s locker. The user is provided with 1 GB of storage space to securely store their documents digitally. Having a DigiLocker account can save you from unnecessary challans, which if left unpaid can even leave you with the unfortunate event of vehicle blacklist. It is also a very positive step towards reducing unnecessary use of paper in official government documents. It also enhances the convenience of the user, since the DigiLocker account holder can access their documents anytime and anywhere, saving time and effort. Along with that, it helps in authenticating the validity of documents, since the documents in the locker are issued by registered issuers. People can also easily self-attest their documents with the eSign facility.
According to the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, all documents saved digitally on the DigiLocker platform are considered valid by the government, and the user need not produce the original documents physically instead, if asked to do so. To ensure authenticity of documents, the government says that any official document in a picture or scanned format will not be accepted as a digital copy if not from DigiLocker. The DigiLocker platform is fairly simple to use for the citizens of the country, and has given them the option of linking their DigiLocker account with their Google or Facebook log-ins as well.
