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Aadhaar eSign is a government prescribed method of digitally signing a document and has legal and evidentiary value equivalent to that of wet (hand-written) signatures. In fact, digital signatures including Aadhaar eSigns can have more evidentiary weight than wet signatures.
Now you might be thinking - what’s the big deal? Haven’t digital signatures existed for ages now? What’s special about Aadhaar eSign as a digital signature?
Before we examine this question, let’s do a quick recap of digital signatures - because Aadhaar eSign is, first and foremost, a form of digital signature.
A signature is essentially a signal of acceptance or agreement usually affixed on a document to ensure:
A digital signature uses principles of encryption to secure a document and ensure that authentication, integrity and non repudiation needs are met in much more secure and effective fashion than traditional, wet-ink signatures.
We’ve covered HOW exactly digital signatures achieve this in a separate, long read about digital signatures.
Digital signatures have been in use in India for almost two decades now. But they’ve been confined to a limited set of use cases.
Governmental filings related to operations and management of Companies in India, need to be carried out through digital signing by the authorized representatives of the Companies. Similarly you might have come across your Accountants, Company Secretaries using pen-drive/dongle based digital signatures for such filings.
But why did they never scale past these limited use cases?
For a long time, the concept of digital signatures in India was limited to USB-token- based electronic signatures known as Digital Signature Certificate Tokens or DSC Tokens.
But DSC Tokens are a big problem:
This method is definitely not suitable to scale to 1 billion + people in a country like India. Most citizens either cannot, or are unwilling, to go through these hoops and procure a digital signature token.
That’s where Aadhaar eSign fills the gap
Introduced in 2015, Aadhaar eSign is a legally compliant mode of electronic signature in India that allows anyone to sign as long as they have:
Armed with the above, the Aadhaar eSign process becomes a super-easy flow:
The above process can be completed in under a minute!
Don’t believe that? Well, try it out for yourself right now
The Aadhaar eSign process is revolutionary because:
This method is definitely very scalable for 1 billion + citizens - and has the potential to revolutionize the way paperwork is executed in India.
Still have questions regarding Aadhaar eSign? You can check Aadhaar eSign FAQs to get more clarity.
Interested in diving deeper into the world of Aadhaar eSign? Here’s 2 links:
Are you interested in integrating Aadhaar eSign into your business processes? Leegality - through our parent company, Grey Swift Private Ltd. - is a registered Application Service Provider for Aadhaar eSign.
However we don’t just stop at Aadhaar eSign. The Leegality Platform also solves for ALL the document execution needs of a modern Indian business like - eStamp, Contracting Compliance, Document Security, Signer Verification and Document Automation
More than 1000+ Indian businesses - like Federal Bank, HDFC, ICICI Lombard, SBI Cards, Bank of Baroda, HDB Financial, Axis Finance and Razorpay among others - are currently using Leegality to digitally transform their documentation.
Will you be next?
If you still have questions regarding Aadhaar eSign, you can check our Aadhaar eSign FAQ page and clear your doubts. Alternatively, you can also check out Digital Stamping FAQ, Virtual Sign FAQ and Section 65B FAQ to get more insights.