As a part of its Digital India Drive endeavour, Maharashtra government which is one of India’s state governments, has started releasing caste certificates over the Polygon blockchain to citizens of Etapalli village in Gadchiroli district of the state. The government has partnered with LegitDoc, a blockchain-based application for this cause.
As per the article posted by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Shubham Gupta, the state of Maharashtra is in the course of rolling out 65,000 caste certificates to help the procedure of providing government schemes and benefits.
Gupta’s article also cites a case study co-authored by LegitDoc CEO Neil Martis. The document reveals that the caste certificate issuance using neutral web3 platforms has a target to serve 1.1 million economically challenged residents of the Gadchiroli district, out of which 70% represents the tribal population.
In addition to this, the verifiability of certificates will help it to thwart ‘forgery aims’ of malicious agents to falsely claim government-provided benefits that are rather meant for the underprivileged.
Both the authors outlined the significance of Web3 protocols in keeping the general public safe from the financial and the non-financial deplatformation.
The role of the LegitDoc platform is to fetch selected data from the government-run MahaOnline portal and upload it to the Polygon proof-of-stake blockchain. Following which QR code and certificates are generated which can be verified by other government departments.
It is also informed that the physical (printed) form of blockchain certificates can also be verified using this new system.
Martis has revealed that many departments within the Maharashtra government like Social justice department, Minorities Dept, IT, School Education Departments, NMMC-Mumbai are also in the middle of switching from traditional systems to blockchain-based documents/data storage.
A previous instance of partnership between the government of Maharashtra and LegitDoc took place when the government had utilized the firm’s ‘Ethereum blockchain-based system’ to verify and issue its digital diploma certificates to verify the skill certificate of MSBSDE.
