e-District certificates set to touch 5 crore

26 certificates are now available through the portal

The e-District project, run by the Kerala IT Mission, is set to reach a major milestone of issuing five crore certificates through its online portal. As of September, a 4.83 crore certificates have been issued, over the past six years since full-scale operations began across all districts. It was first launched as a pilot project in two districts in 2010.

As many as 26 certificates, for which people once used to queue up at village offices and taluk offices, are now available through the e-district portal (https://edistrict.kerala.gov.in).

They include possession certificate, income certificate, caste certificate, nativity certificate, community certificate, residence certificate, domicile certificate, life certificate, identification certificate, legal heir certificate, widow-widower certificate, dependency certificate, destitute certificate, inter-caste marriage certificate, minority certificate, and non-creamy layer certificate.

25 lakh people

Since 2016, the e-District portal has been linked with DigiLocker, the digital locker system launched by the Union government to securely store documents online.

The IT Mission has made available all the certificates of more than 25 lakh people in Digilocker. It estimates that at least one person from 80 lakh families in Kerala are using the e-district portal now.

“The public here realised the importance of Digilocker during the recent floods. Those who lost their documents could easily pull out certificates from the Digilocker using only the Aadhaar number. Since it is a digitally signed certificate, it can be used for all purposes, just like the original. The certificates of anyone applying now are automatically pushed to the Digilocker too, from where they can retrieve it any number of times,” said an official of the IT Mission.

Some services of the Forest Department have also been added to the e-district portal. This include compensation disbursal for death, injury, and property or crop damage due to wildlife attacks.

Around 30,000 compensation applications have been received through the portal till date. From this year, complaints regarding the LIFE housing project can also be submitted through the portal. The complaints to the district or State mission can be submitted here, with the reply also provided online.

“Since the databases of various departments are linked to the portal, it becomes easy for officials of the village office to approve requests. For instance, to check birth dates of an applicant, it is enough to pull out data from the Pareeksha Bhavan database, which is linked to it,” says the official.

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