The Delhi High Court on Monday sought response of the Centre on a petition against the rules pertaining to operation of DigiLocker, the government’s online document storage facility app, on the ground that it does not have a nomination facility.
A Bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice C. Hari Shankar asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to give its stand on the issue.
DigiLocker is a flagship initiative of MEITY under ‘Digital India’ programme. The issued documents in DigiLocker system are deemed to be at par with original physical documents.
The plea by Kusum Arora, who claims to be a poet and author of short stories, argued that not allowing a user to nominate a successor or heir to operate the facility on her/his death was “arbitrary” and “unconstitutional”. It sought striking down of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries providing Digital Locker facilities) Rules 2016 “to the extent it does not provide for a nomination facility”.
The plea contended that in the absence of a nominee, on the user’s death, all the documents uploaded on Digilocker app would not be accessible by his or her kin and would automatically get passed on to the government.
Published - January 07, 2020 01:42 am IST
