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DigiLocker (2015): India’s Paperless Document Wallet – IMPRI Impact And Policy Research Institute

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IMPRI
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22
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Digilocker

Policy Update
Diva Bhatia

Background

Launched on 1st July 2015 as part of the Digital India initiative, DigiLocker is the flagship initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) that gives every citizen a unique, cloud-based storage space in which to store and share original digital documents (Press Information Bureau, 2022a). Initially designed to prevent forgery and reduce administrative delays, DigiLocker connects with users’ Aadhaar numbers for safe, OTP-based verification, providing 1 GB of free storage per account. Gradually, its ambit has widened from storing basic identity documents, like driving licences and vehicle registration certificates, to holding a wide range of government-issued documents in health, education, finance and more.

The platform benefits individuals, issuers (government departments, educational institutions, private organizations) and requesters (verifying agencies), with integration being subject to open RESTful APIs under MeitY’s Open API Policy, which focuses on safety, fairness, privacy and preventing misuse of AI). (DigiLocker, 2025). The beneficiaries cover all demographics: urban professionals needing instant access to documents for e-services, students who want tamper-evident mark sheets, citizens in rural locations getting ration cards digitally and old-aged citizens who find physical documentation tiresome.

Since its launch, DigiLocker has worked to achieve three central goals: (1) Paperless Governance- abolishing hard-copy reliance; (2)E-Authentication- offering government-authenticated digital copies; and (3) Service Integration- facilitating easy access to public and private sector services.

Functioning

DigiLocker uses a federated “push-pull” system, indicating that data comes from numerous trusted sources. Issuers push digitally signed documents straight into users’ lockers, while requesters, with the explicit permission of the user, pull documents to verify. Aadhaar-based OTP or the MeriPehchaan Single Sign-On service ensures strong identity validation (Press Information Bureau, 2024). The platform supports two separate repositories: (1) Issued Documents, holding government-verified documents supplied through API; and (2) Uploaded Documents, where people scan and upload older or offline documents so that no document gets left behind.

Interoperability with other e-governance services has been critical. In October 2024, DigiLocker collaborated with UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) to provide app-within-app access to more than 1,658 central and state services (Press Information Bureau, 2024).

In November 2022, it finished Level 2 integration with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), enabling 130 million ABHA holders to digitize and exchange health records (vaccination certificates, laboratory reports and prescriptions) directly from laboratories and hospitals into their lockers.

The Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA) joined in October 2022 to facilitate National Pension System (NPS) account opening and updation of address through driving licence data in DigiLocker. Most recently, in March 2025, SEBI came out with a circular to leverage DigiLocker for unclaimed securities asset reduction, allowing investors to retrieve demat holdings, mutual-fund statements and Consolidated Account Statements (CAS) and to designate nominees for smooth legal-heir access (Press Information Bureau, 2025). These interlinkages highlight DigiLocker as a Digital Public Infrastructure, enabling interoperability across various sectors.

Performance (2022–2025)

In the last three years, DigiLocker has witnessed steady and exponential growth in all the significant parameters. In March 2022, the platform had 1,783 issuers registered and provided access to 494 crore digital documents. As of November the same year, registered users stood at about 13.5 crore, and the repository of documents grew to 562 crore records (Press Information Bureau, 2022b).

Additional integration with the Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) in October 2024 allowed users to utilize more than 1,658 government services directly from the app interface, enhancing its interoperability and convenience (Press Information Bureau, 2024). In March 2025, the number of users in DigiLocker had grown to 51.52 crore, representing almost a four-fold expansion from 2022. The number of documents issued also increased exponentially to 943.36 crore. Moreover, the platform had registered 1,936 active issuers and connected 2,407 requesters, creating a strong network of stakeholders (DigiLocker, 2025).

This quick expansion testifies to the government’s effort towards digitalization and administrative reforms. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of the issuance of documents was around 26 per cent over the period between March 2022 and March 2025. Issuer partnerships also developed consistently, increasing by more than 8 per cent annually. These numbers all together point to DigiLocker’s changing purpose from a storage device in the digital space to a major driver of paperless governance in India (National Academic Depository, 2025).

Impact

As a result, the conversion of DigiLocker from a mere document repository to a more broad digital-ID ecosystem has generated quantifiable benefits:

Administrative Efficiency: Verifying documents like mark sheets and caste certificates in government offices now takes minutes instead of days, thus curtailing queues and paperwork. An approximation of annual savings to the tune of ₹1,200 crore, from reduced use of paper, prints and workforce, was noted in a Lok Sabha reply (ORF, 2023).

Citizen Convenience: Survey results indicate that 85 per cent of users rated the mobile application as “very good,” and 78 per cent stated that, for each transaction, at least one physical visit is avoided owing to DigiLocker (MeitY Annual Report, 2025).

Health Outcomes: The first year of integration of ABDM saw more than 85,000 ABHA numbers generated from DigiLocker, while more than 130 million users have digital health records, ensuring continuity of care and minimizing medical transcription errors (Press Information Bureau, 2022b).

Financial Inclusion: The initiative by SEBI in March 2025 is expected to open thousands of crores of unclaimed securities by facilitating nominee access, thus enhancing investor protection and improving estate settlement (Press Information Bureau, 2025).

Educational Integrity: The National Academic Depository, which is hosted on DigiLocker, secures more than 90 crores of certificates from 2,906 institutions, safeguarding academic credentials and curbing diploma fraud (DigiLocker, 2025). Together, these outcomes attest to DigiLocker’s role in strengthening governance, improving service delivery and empowering citizens through digital inclusion.

Emerging Challenges

Even with its success, some challenges have emerged:

Digital Divide: Rural India’s internet penetration is 49 per cent compared to 74 per cent in urban India (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 2024). Most rural users lack stable connectivity or digital literacy, hindering locker adoption and issuer integration at the grassroots level.

Data Security & Privacy: With almost one billion documents on the cloud, end-to-end encryption, regular security scanning and compliance with data-protection guidelines similar to the EU’s GDPR are crucial to instilling confidence.

Dependence on Aadhaar: Excessive dependency on Aadhaar-OTP eliminates residents with no linked mobile number or those undergoing authentication failure. Other proofs of identity, e.g., voter Ids, passports, should be made part of the system to expand accessibility.

State-Level Differences: Differences in digital policies and capacity among states (Rajasthan, Northern, West Bengal, etc) lead to uneven issuer onboarding, constricting cross-jurisdictional document sharing and causing siloes.

Knowledge Gap: As urban millennials use the platform, senior citizens and underprivileged groups are still uninformed. To bridge this gap, multi-lingual outreach and local training through Common Service Centres (CSCs) is necessary.

To tackle these challenges, there is a need for coordinated effort from central and state governments, CSC operators, civil-society organisations and private-sector partners to facilitate fair access and strong governance.

Way Forward

DigiLocker, India’s flagship digital repository, seeks to enable paperless governance, seamless e-authentication and integrated service delivery for citizens. In strengthening this role, the following steps for DigiLocker will include scaling its infrastructure with enhanced cloud capacity, adding edge-computing nodes and optimizing APIs for efficient peak-load handling. Enhancing the user experience can help address connectivity issues, via better-designed interfaces, chatbot support and offline access through CSC kiosks.

Further strengthening these legal frameworks, enshrined in the IT Act, 2000, with the laying down of clear liabilities and data protection oversight, is fundamental (The IP Press, 2022). This will expand different use cases and encourage adoption by broadening partnerships with banks, insurers and education platforms outside the government.

Finally, the adoption of AI/ML will provide solutions for document classification, fraud detection and personalized services. Such promising technologies ensure DigiLocker’s innovative, secure, citizen-centric growth (NVIDIA,2023). Thus, in putting all these interventions together, in unison with achievable goals of paperless governance, e-authentication and service integration, DigiLocker will stand firmly on its strength as the premier Digital Public Infrastructure in India, thereby ensuring transparency, efficiency and citizen empowerment.

References

About the Contributor

I am a research intern at IMPRI and currently pursuing a major in Political Science with a minor in History from Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. My research interests include gender studies, international relations and exploring the socio-political intricacies of North East India

Acknowledgement

The contributor gratefully acknowledges the guidance and support provided by Team IMPRI throughout the course of this work.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.

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