DigiLocker : How to start using it?

What is DigiLocker?DigiLocker stands for digital locker, a key initiative under the Digital India program of the Indian government. It allows Indian citizens to store all their important documents like property papers, insurance certificates, PAN card, passport, tax papers, birth and/or marriage certificates, etc. in digital format.  Currently DigiLocker gives 1 GB of free space to facilitate the storage. DigiLocker aims to provide secure access to government-issued documents and reduce administrative overhead of government departments and agencies by enabling you to share these documents with a number of government agencies online.  DigiLocker also provides a mechanism to verify the authenticity of your documents online with the e-sign facility which allows you to digitally sign the uploaded documents.

How can you open a DigiLocker account?You just need your mobile number to sign up for DigiLocker .  Your mobile number will be authenticated by sending a  one-time password (OTP) after which you can select a username & password to create your DigiLocker account. After creating your DigiLocker account you can voluntarily provide your Aadhaar number . This is required to receive issued documents from registered issuers. In addition, if you link your Aadhaar to your DigiLocker account your digital Aadhaar is made automatically available.

The finer detailsThe documents in DigiLocker are classified as either ‘issued documents’ or ‘uploaded documents’. 
Issued documents are issued by government agencies directly from the original data source and the link to these documents is available in the issued documents section. Uploaded documents are those which are uploaded directly by you.  You can upload your documents in pdf, jpeg & png formats. The maximum size of the uploaded document is limited to 10 MB.

You can easily digitally sign your documents using the esign service as a method of self-attestation.  The signer is authenticated using Aadhaar eKYC services.

DigiLocker uses 256-bit SSL encryption which is widely used in payment and banking services to provide an extra layer of security and protect against theft of login details and password. To receive issued documents from registered issuers, you will need to authenticate yourself using Aadhaar’s Biometric or Mobile OTP authentication service.

As of date there are 4757884 DigiLocker users and 1654159769 documents stored in the digital form. The top three states in number of users are Uttar Pradesh (207238), Maharashtra (199829) and Tamilnadu (128979).

DigiLocker has an on the Google play store. You can download it here. You can download the app. So if you have your license and registration documents on DigiLocker, you don’t have to carry the original driver’s license or registration papers anymore. Instead you can show a copy of it on your smartphones the next time they are stopped at checkpoints by a traffic personnel.