The Indian government is looking to develop a uniform blockchain platform on which it plans to host an identity management application that can be a single access point for different government-issued IDs such as the Unique Health ID and other IDs under the AgriStack, EduStack, and more. This was stated by officials from NITI Aayog and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) at a panel organised by the Global Blockchain Business Council. CDAC Joint Director Lakshmi Eswari said that the digital ID system is one of the applications that will be hosted on the universal blockchain platform and the government will onboard other applications in the coming five years. Eswari said that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has created a roadmap for its adoption. For the time being, she added, the government will be using an existing blockchain solution and in the future, it will be looking for an indigenously developed platform. These remarks come a few months after MeitY urged the Indian government to create a National Level Blockchain Framework (NLBF). The ministry’s draft National Strategy on Blockchain recommended using blockchain for public projects that have to do with digital identities, land records, health records, official documents, and more. Currently hard for Indians to prove identity online: NITI Aayog Justifying the blockchain-based ID management system, Saurabh Thukral, Senior Specialist at NITI Aayog, said that currently, it is hard for Indians to prove their identity in the online sphere. The government wants to have a mechanism where citizens can…
