Your driving licence or vehicle registration certificate (RC) will soon be well protected, with the Centre deciding to provide ‘digital lockers’ to keep these documents safe.

The lockers, which can be accessed anytime anywhere, will also help the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to issue driving licences and RC documents to individuals in digital formats, thus eliminating the use of physical documents. For this, it has roped in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s ‘DigiLocker’.

DigiLocker (digilocker.gov.in), a platform launched last July by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, currently has more than 21,26,332 registered users with 24,11,702 uploaded documents. It has issued over 4,26,73,232 documents as on September 1.

“This integration has been envisaged to bring about a paradigm shift in the vision of paperless governance. The main objectives are to bring agility and efficiency to the entire process of issuance of driving licences and vehicle registration certificates process through IT enablement,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of IT, Law & Justice.

Use as ID proof

This will also assure authenticity of such documents since they will be accessed directly from the source. The citizens will also be able to share the authentic digital certificates instead of paper copies with other departments as identity and address proof, resulting in reduction of administrative overhead, he added.

Pointing out that citizens can use them for identification at airports too, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said: “The system will not only eliminate corruption but is a mega step towards realising Prime Minister’s Digital India drive.”

The move is vital for the transport sector, where 19.5 crore vehicles are registered and there are 10 crore driving licences, he added.

The digital driving licence and RC documents will be available on cellphones via the DigiLocker mobile app, and this can be examined by various law enforcement authorities such as traffic police.

Once the data from all the RTOs is updated in the National Register Systems, the digital copies of those driving licences and RC documents will also be available via DigiLocker.

The DigiLocker accounts and digitally signed accounts will be on par with the physical certificates as per the IT Act, 2000.

Gadkari said the proposed new Motor Vehicle legislation will also have provisions for online driving licences, adding that the Transport Ministry is actively pursuing the digitisation of documents to help in enforcement of traffic laws and enhance citizen convenience.

Citizens who sign up for a DigiLocker account get dedicated cloud storage space which can be used for storing key documents like voter IDs.

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