Karnataka has issued a sweeping set of standard directions to every government department to move licences, certificates and fee payments online, signalling a statewide push to cut paperwork and repeat document submissions for citizens. The order, issued by the Praja Seva Department, which drives administrative reforms and reports directly to Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, requires that all such services be digitised and brought under the state’s Sakala time-bound delivery guarantee.
“All services provided by departments for issuing licences, certificates etc shall be brought online and brought under Sakala. Timelines for Sakala services shall be reduced. Wherever possible, certificates shall be issued over the counter,” Harsh Gupta, Principal Secretary, Praja Seva, stated in the order, as reported by Deccan Herald on 27 October 2026.
Aadhaar by default, DigiLocker for storage
The directions make Aadhaar the default authentication option for all services. Where Aadhaar cannot be mandated, departments may allow alternatives such as mobile number-based verification. Departments have also been asked to verify citizen data online “as far as possible” by inter-linking their databases rather than asking applicants to produce physical proofs.
Every certificate and licence issued to citizens is to be stored in DigiLocker. The order further mandates that the relevant fields in Kutumba, the state’s family database, be updated in real time “so that no citizen is asked to submit a document the government already has.”
Online fees, multi-year renewals and a downtime dashboard
Manual fee collection is to be phased out “as far as possible”, with fees for all government applications payable online, including through UPI. For certificates that are renewed against a fee, citizens will get the option to pay for a block of years, with the certificate remaining valid for the period paid for, removing the need for repeated annual renewals.
Acknowledging that server outages frequently disrupt service delivery, the order requires a dashboard report showing server downtime to be made available. Property inspections by any department are also to be initiated through an online application, preferably a mobile app, and based on objective criteria wherever possible.
Building on the Sakala framework
Karnataka currently notifies 1,981 public services under the Karnataka Sakala Services Act, giving citizens a legal guarantee of delivery within a stipulated time. Of these, 738 services are already fully online and do not require a visit to a government office. The new directions aim to widen that digital footprint across departments and shorten the guaranteed timelines.
The order follows the state’s recent move to bring physical RTI applications under Sakala with mandatory online registration, and builds the reform agenda around a simple principle: once the government holds a citizen’s record, it should not ask for it again.
Why it matters for e-governance
The directions bring together several building blocks of India’s digital public infrastructure: Aadhaar-based authentication, DigiLocker credentials, UPI payments and integrated state databases, under an enforceable service-delivery law. Publishing server downtime and moving inspections onto apps also adds a layer of accountability that citizens can see. If departments implement the order consistently, Karnataka could offer other states a practical model for “once-only” document submission and end-to-end online service delivery.