DigiLocker | A gift to you by Government of India

DigiLocker is a gift to you by Govt. of India. You can upload soft copies of your important documents up in the cloud. Many agencies who are tied up with govt. can also issue your certificate/license directly into your DigiLocker account. This eliminates the need of carrying original documents with you. This also ensures the authenticity of the documents that you share with your employer / educational institution or others. To know more about DigiLocker features and how to use them – read the below guidelines.

DigiLocker is an offering under Govt. of India’s ‘Digital India’ initiative. With this, the government provides a digital locker space for every citizen. You can keep, carry, retrieve, receive and share your important documents and certificates through this. Total storage space that you get in your DigiLocker account is 1 GB. One single file size can be maximum of 10 MB. You can store files with extensions .pdf, .png and .jpeg.

DigiLocker is linked to your Aadhar card. Certificates/Licenses can be directly sent to your DigiLocker account by various government agencies and hence their authenticity cannot be questioned. You can also self-attest (eSign) your documents which are there in the DigiLocker. There are many other features which separate this from other cloud-based applications.

Open browser application (like Google Chrome) in your desktop/laptop. Make sure you are connected to the internet. Open the following website: https://digilocker.gov.in Look at the top right corner of the page. You will see two buttons there – ‘Sign In’ and ‘Sign Up’. Click on ‘Sign Up’.

The next screen will ask you to enter your mobile number. It is recommended that you enter the mobile number which is linked to your Aadhar card. Click on ‘Continue’.

Next, you will be asked to enter OTP (which is received in your mobile number). Enter the OTP and click ‘Verify’.

Next, you will be asked to choose your ‘username’ and ‘password’. Choose a unique username and enter a password which must contain alphabet, number and a special character, say for example – Abcd123$. Click ‘Signup’. You are done!

Your DigiLocker account is created successfully. But to get best out of your DigiLocker provide your Aadhar number in the next screen, choose option ‘Use OTP’ and click ‘Submit’. Now you will be taken to your DigiLocker ‘Dashboard’ screen.

On the bottom side of the Dashboard screen, you will notice an area where you can link and verify your email id. Provide your email id there and click ‘Send verification link’. Next, open your email inbox and click on the verification link to complete the process.

‘Issued Documents’ are documents which are issued to you by various agencies which have tied up with DigiLocker – like CBSE can directly issue your mark sheets to your DigiLocker account or RTO can directly issue your Driving License to your DigiLocker account. When such documents are issued to you, those documents can be seen under ‘Issued Documents’ link. Please note – such issued documents are considered completely official and valid. So if you are asked by a Traffic Police to show your Driving License – you can very well show him the copy stored in your DigiLocker.

‘Uploaded Documents’ stores documents which are uploaded by you. You can scan or take a snap of various documents / certificates of yours – like PAN card, Passport, Aadhar card, Secondary, Higher Secondary, Graduation certificates / mark-sheets etc. and upload those images. To upload such images, click on ‘Uploaded Documents’. In the next screen, you will see two folders which are already created for you – ‘Documents’ and ‘My Certificates’. Click on any of these folders first. When no files are stored, you will see the message - ‘No files yet’. Next click on ‘Upload’ icon. Locate the file you want to upload.

Beside the name of the uploaded file, you can notice a ‘pen’ icon. Clicking on this icon will help you to rename the file. You can give any name to your file. But to later identify what type of document is this – you can specify a type. To do that, click on ‘Select Doc Type’. Choose an appropriate type of document from the drop-down list. To self-attest, your uploaded documents, click on ‘eSign’ button. An OTP will be sent to your Aadhar linked mobile number. Verify with that and you are done. Once a document is eSigned, it gets converted to a PDF document compulsorily. To share an uploaded document with others, click on the ‘Share’ icon. You will be asked to enter the email of the person to whom a link will be sent immediately by DigiLocker Team. Clicking on that link the person will be able to view/download your shared document.

You can download the DigiLocker App from Google Playstore in your Android mobile. Many of the tasks can be completed through Mobile App also. Some of the tasks are still giving error messages. Mobile App features have a lot of scopes for improvements.  If documents can be accessed offline also, that would be of great help as a network is still not available at many places. But the good news is lots of improvements are being made regularly in DigiLocker.

Future of DigiLocker is bright. More and more agencies will issue documents/certificates directly to citizen’s DigiLocker account. This will eliminate paper documents and thus remove the chances of frauds. You can give access to your employer to view/download your certificates which are issued directly by schools/colleges/universities or eSigned by you.

Start using DigiLocker and manage your documents in a smarter and better way.