Indian Railways’ latest notification will provide some respite. Now train passengers don’t have to carry hard copies of their ID proofs, Indian Railways will accept the digital avatars of documents such as the Aadhaar and driving licence.
Indian Railways have announced that they will accept soft copies of Aadhar and driving licence provided they are in your DigiLocker, a digital storage service operated by the government that enables Indian citizens to store certain official documents on cloud.
The issue regarding accepting Aadhaar and Driving Licence as valid proof of identity when presented from digital locker account of the passenger has been examined by Ministry of Railways and it has been decided that while undertaking journey in a train, if a passenger shows the Aadhaar/Driving Licence from the ‘Issued Documents’ section by logging into his/her DigiLocker account, the same should be considered as valid proof of identity. It is, however, clarified that the documents uploaded by the user himself/herself (i.e. the documents in ‘Uploaded Documents’ section) will not be considered as a valid proof of identity.
At present, the following proofs of identity are considered as valid for undertaking journey in any reserved class of Indian Railways:-
I. Voter Photo identity card issued by Election Commission of India
II. Passport
III. PAN Card issued by Income Tax Department
IV. Driving Licence issued by RTO
V. Photo identity card having serial number issued by Central/State Government
VI. Student Identity Card with photograph issued by recognized School/College for their students
VII. Nationalised Bank Passbook with photograph
VIII. Credit Cards issued by Banks with laminated photograph
IX. Unique Identification Card-Aadhaar, m-Aadhaar & e-Aadhaar
X. Photo Identity cards having serial number issued by Public Sector Undertakings of State/Central Government, District Administrations, Municipal bodies and Panchayat Administrations
XI. In case of reserved tickets booked through computerized Passenger Reservation System (PRS) counters, for undertaking journey in Sleeper (SL) & Second Reserved Sitting (2S) classes, attested photocopy of Ration Card with photographs and Nationalized Bank Passbook with Photograph are also accepted
