NeGD, NeSL ink pact on handling digital documents for businesses, govt entities

New Delhi, Oct 8 (IANS) The National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and the National E-Governance Services Limited (NeSL) have entered into a landmark Memorandum of Understanding to enhance and integrate digital document management for businesses and government entities, according to an official statement issued on Wednesday.

NeGD functions under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), while the NeSL is an information utility regulated by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI).

Over 60 institutions like banks, NBFCs, capital market entities, and corporate entities will benefit from the initiative, as issuance, renewal, and invocation of bank guarantees can be done in a few minutes rather than days, which has been taking until now.

The MoU was signed at the Global Fintech Fest 2025.

Through this collaboration, the NeGD's cloud-based document management platform, Entity Locker- an extension of the DigiLocker initiative aimed at streamlining document issuance, storage, sharing, and verification - will integrate with the NeSL’s Digital Document Execution (DDE) platform. The DDE platform is a pioneering solution facilitating digital, paperless and secure execution of contracts, including electronic bank guarantees (e-BGs), which are legally enforceable in a digital form.

The MoU enables the beneficiaries and applicants of e-BGs to securely fetch and access digitally executed bank guarantees from the NeSL’s eBG repository directly into their respective Entity Locker accounts. This integration will foster faster, more transparent, and legally compliant digital workflows, supporting India’s vision of accelerated digital governance and ease of doing business.

The benefits of NeSL’s e-BG include a fully secure and tamper-proof document, faster turnaround of a few minutes compared to a few days in respect of physical BGs, and issuance and all life cycle events like renewal, invocation, etc, through the digital mode.

Besides, it will provide a paperless and, hence, environment-friendly facility, which is easily verifiable through a central repository.

The partnership includes provisions for secure sharing of financial information, strict adherence to applicable laws, including the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, and compliance with data privacy regulations, the statement said.

This alliance establishes a foundation for future associations and innovations in the digital solution space, further enhancing the efficiency of government-to-business and business-to-business digital interactions, it further said.

NeGD Director J.L. Gupta said: "We are expecting more such collaborations with NeSL in the future. With NESL’s e-stamp paper service, one can procure e-stamp paper and sign contracts in real time digitally using the e-signing facility, ensuring a seamless, paperless, and legally valid process."

--IANS

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