DPI Brief — September 30, 2026

Identity: UIDAI takes its Lucknow-built token system nationwide, as open-source dedup tool Bharat ABIS surfaces

UIDAI has rolled out the Token Management System (TMS), conceived and developed by its Lucknow regional office, across the country. Citizens can now book Aadhaar enrolment-and-update appointments free of cost through the UIDAI portal or a QR code and receive a digital token that holds their place in queue, replacing the first-come-first-served crush at enrolment centres (Times of India). It is a small, citizen-visible service-quality upgrade for a layer where physical queues have long been the default interface.

Alongside, researchers associated with UIDAI have developed Bharat ABIS, an open-source Automated Biometric Identification System that has been tested against 220 million Aadhaar records and is positioned as a faster, cheaper way to catch duplicate Aadhaar enrolments (India Today). Open-sourcing the de-duplication layer is notable for a stack that has been almost entirely proprietary; it also invites the public scrutiny that comes with open code.

Documents: DigiLocker wants a seat inside banks, insurers and hospitals — comments open till October 10

MeitY’s National e-Governance Division has published a Request for Empanelment (September 21) to push DigiLocker into the private sector — banks, insurers, educational institutions and healthcare firms — through empanelled agencies that fetch Issued Documents on behalf of requesters (MediaNama). The RFE hard-wires trust-layer obligations into the documents layer: empanelled agencies fall under the DPDP Act and CERT-In directions, cannot retain, store, cache, profile or reuse Issued Document content, and must act only on the requester’s documented instructions. Comments are due October 10, 2026. A separate NeGD tender seeks AI-capable firms to deploy AI agents across UMANG, DigiLocker and other Digital India platforms. On the supply side, the Bihar School Examination Board has put its 2026 Class 10 and Class 12 marksheets and certificates on DigiLocker (Times of India).

Sectoral: Rabi conference puts AgriStack on the table as farmer registries cross new milestones

The two-day National Agriculture Conference — Rabi Abhiyan 2026 (September 28–29, NASC Pusa, New Delhi) brought state agriculture ministers together with ICAR and the Union Agriculture Ministry, with the Digital Agriculture Mission, farmer registry, digital crop survey and AgriStack on the formal agenda (Dainik Jagran). State-level progress is substantial: Gujarat has registered over 63.35 lakh farmers in its registry linking Aadhaar-based identity with verified land records (as of September 23) (GKToday), while three Uttar Pradesh districts have hit 100% of their registry targets; the Centre is also working toward a dynamic registry that updates automatically as records-of-rights change (Times of India). As the farmer registry becomes the identity layer for scheme delivery, the accuracy of its land linkage is now a welfare-delivery issue, not just a data-quality one.

Governance: CPGRAMS August numbers out — 98,997 grievances filed, 79,639 disposed

DARPG’s 49th CPGRAMS monthly report (August 2026) shows 98,997 grievances registered and 79,639 disposed, with Uttar Pradesh leading volumes at 28,939 cases (Plutus IAS). The platform added over 1.38 lakh new users in August and is now integrated at more than 5 lakh Common Service Centres nationwide (DARPG). The CSC integration is the structural story: grievance filing now rides on the same village-level entrepreneurs who operate other DPI access points, pulling the complaints layer down to the last mile.

Trust: TRAI’s Digital Connectivity Rating platform goes live — properties now carry connectivity star ratings

TRAI launched the Digital Connectivity Rating (DCR) Platform on September 25, implementing its Rating of Properties for Digital Connectivity Regulations, 2024 (amended May 13, 2026), with a companion mobile app. Residential, commercial and government properties get one-to-five star ratings on fibre readiness, mobile network availability, in-building solutions and Wi-Fi infrastructure; buyers and tenants can search rated properties by name, certificate ID or location and verify digitally signed certificates via QR code (Moneycontrol; Business Standard). With 70–80% of mobile data consumed indoors, TRAI is turning in-building connectivity into a disclosed, verifiable property attribute — 11 property managers and around seven properties are registered so far, so adoption is the metric to watch.

Following Monday’s refusal to stay the UPI MDR framework, the bench of CJI Surya Kant pressed the Centre on the charge’s legal nature — “Is it a tax or a fee? If it is not a tax or a fee, then what is the executive scope of making this expropriation on transactions?” — while allowing the October 15 rollout to proceed (Times of India). Centre, RBI and NPCI responses are due within four weeks; the 0.4% MDR above ₹2,000 (capped at ₹300) remains on schedule, with P2P payments and transactions up to ₹2,000 untouched.

The Daily DPI Brief tracks India’s Digital Public Infrastructure across seven layers: Identity, Payments, Documents, Commerce, Sectoral, Governance and Trust.