India’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has urged the distribution platform operators to go digital and use government-operated DigiLocker for various services, including customer verifications.

In a note to various stakeholders, including HITS, MSOs, LCOs and IPTV players, the ministry said DigiLocker project has been implemented so citizens can store and have access to their digital documents/certificates from the original issuers of these documents anytime, anywhere.

As per Rule 9A of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention Of Information by Intermediaries Providing Digital Locker facility) Rules, 2016 notified on 08.02.2017, the documents in DigiLocker are deemed to be at par with original physical documents, the note said.

MIB highlighted that e-documents from DigiLocker could be used as part of customer identification process, a mandatory requirement under the license given by MIB to various platforms.

“In view of the above, all the distribution platform operators (DTH/HITS/IPTV/MSOs/LCOs) are advised to adopt DigiLocker documents as per their respective requirements. It will be appreciated if the systems adopted for customer verification are also appropriately integrated in line with the spirit of the initiative,” the MIB note suggested.