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BENGALURU: Data repository NSDL shut down Aadhaar e-sign services on Thursday midnight said sources. This follows a directive from the UIDAI, according to an internal circular from NSDL viewed by TOI.

eSign is an online electronic signature service that can facilitate an Aadhaar holder to digitally sign a document. Such e-sign signature services were supposed to aid digital transaction and verifications. But NSDL has been facing a lot of issues in terms of integrating different data sets for purposes of verification, mismatches and submission of fakes.

Sources said NSDL had approached UIDAI on resolution for some of the issues faced by Aadhaar e-sign services. TOI had emailed UIDAI in this regard, but has not received any response at the time of publication.

"e-Sign was envisioned to help industrialists, investors, startups and business owners. Instead of every party being present for signing pertinent company documents or records, with e-sign one can share an agreement with co-founders or partners. One can also send joint signed statement with instructions for banks. But there have been a lot of technical glitches -- and not many people adopted e-signatures," said a source with NSDL.

Another hurdle to the eSign project was Aadhaar's tokenisation project which never took off. "When there was fear that the 12-digit Aadhaar number was getting compromised, UIDAI proposed the 16-digit Aadhaar tokenisation system. But nearly a year into the announcement nothing has been done on that front. So eSign was supposed to work as a two-way authentication system, involving the individual’s 12 digit Aadhaar number/16-digit token and OTP. But it hasn't taken off," said another source in the financial services industry.

