India is getting rid of physical driver licenses with smartphones

If you drive a vehicle in India, you won't have to fret about forgetting your driver's license or car registration papers any more.

The Indian government today announced it will now allow people to upload their driving license and car registration card to DigiLocker, its secure digital cloud storage service. These digital copies of their documents will be deemed valid by traffic police and other law enforcement agencies. The move effectively frees people from the hassle of carrying paper documents everywhere they go. Those who want to avail the feature will need to install DigiLocker app on their phone, and link their phone number with it. The officials will also have an app to seamlessly verify documents from the National Register of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. The feature is available starting today.

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The inclusion of driver license and registration card underscores the expansion of DigiLocker, a service that the Indian government launched last year to allow people in the country to store a range of their official documents in the cloud.

Through DigiLocker, the government is providing its citizens 1GB of storage space, which they can utilize to store their college certificates, as well as identification cards such as voter identification card, and Permanent Account Number (PAN). DigiLocker requires a person to use their biometric-enabled Aadhar card (Unique Identification Authority of India) for authentication. A part of the country’s growing Digital India push, DigiLocker aims to curtail the use of physical documents and reduce administrative expenses of government departments and agencies in things such as attesting documents numerous times, and wasting time and paper on documentation.