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Blockchain Technology

8.3.4  Blockchain-based Document Services

Blockchain being a nascent technology in India, its applications are slowly penetrat­

ing into the system in the form of pilot projects. Its major implementations are for

maintaining land records and certificates, since they require more transparent and

immutable data collection to increase trust among the stakeholders and offer an easy

flow of information for efficient service to the public. Some of them are discussed in

the following paragraphs.

In November 2019, Thane smart city within Maharashtra state conducted a pilot

where blockchain technology was integrated into property tax documents. The pilot

programme is a programme developed by the Department of Housing and Urban

Development (MoHUA), “Accelerating the Growth of New India’s Innovation”

(AGNIi), “StartupIndia” and “InvestIndia”. It is a QR code-based one-scan solution,

which is expected to produce authentic encrypted documentation that will provide

instant document verification when stored in the blockchain, alleviate tedious paper­

work, and enable various stakeholders like bank executives, property buyers, lessees

and others to authenticate the original text along with current informs, reducing

fraud to the system as well as to citizens. This pilot project was recognized as the

smart solution of the year in 2019 at theseventh smart cities conclave and given an

award under the category of new technological innovation to improve urban public

service delivery (Sanghani, 2020).

In the state of West Bengal, New Town Kolkata Green Smart City Corporation

Limited (NKGSCCL) has successfully introduced blockchain technology to issue

birth certificates from February 2019. The blockchain solution was introduced to

generate authentic government documents with genuine data entry and all-time

data availability. It has also introduced the use of blockchain technology for its

online services for death registration since February 2019. By the end of 2019At the

time of writing, there have been 402 birth registrations and 365 death registrations

(NKGSCCL, 2019). NKGSCCL bagged the gold award in the Best Smart Health

Initiative of the Year category for application and processing of the birth/date

TABLE 8.1

Various Blockchain Initiatives in India

State

Project

Status

Category

Karnataka

Educational certificates

Implemented

Semi-private

Maharashtra

Land records

Pilot completed

Private

West Bengal

Birth certificates

Implemented

Public

Telangana

Land registration, data protection

PoC completed

Private

Andhra Pradesh

Land records, educational certificates

PoC completed

Semi-private

Goa

Land registry

Exploring feasibility

Private

Uttar Pradesh

Land and revenue records

Announced

Private

Gujarat

e-Governance

Announced

Semi-private