HC seeks Centre's stand on plea challenging IT rules on digilocker

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar issued notice to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and sought its stand on the petition

The Delhi High Court Monday sought response of the Centre on a plea challenging the IT rules pertaining to operation of digilocker, 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 issued notice to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and sought its stand on the petition which contends that not allowing a user to nominate a successor or heir to operate the facility on her/his death was "arbitrary" and "unconstitutional".

The plea by Kusum Arora, who claims to be a poet and author of several short stories, has 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".

As an alternate relief, the petition has sought that the term 'subscriber' in the rules be read down to include the nominee or heir of the original user of the facility.

Arora has contended that in the absence of a nominee, on the user's death, all the documents uploaded on the digilocker app would not be accessible by his/her kin and would automatically pass on to the government.

The Digilocker app can be used to store online scanned documents and certificates, including vehicle registration, driving license, PAN and Aadhaar, and also digitally verify them. It provides a storage space of up to 1GB to each account holder.