By Staff Writer
The Indian government is preparing a national framework to support the wider deployment of blockchain use cases, according to a letter by the Minister of State for electronics and IT Sanjay Dhotre.
According to the letter, the government is drafting an approach paper on the National Level Blockchain Framework which discusses the potential for distributed ledger technology and the need for a shared infrastructure for different use cases.
The letter was in response to MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma who asked whether the government had encouraged and conducted research into potential uses for blockchain technologies.
According to the letter, the Indian government has already built the Distributed Centre of Excellence in Blockchain Technology. It is executed by government and research institutions, including the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology.
Under this initiative, the institutions have piloted a blockchain system for property registration at Shamshabad District, Telangana State, developed proof-of-concept solutions for Cloud Security Assurance, C-KYC and trade finance.
Other ongoing projects include authentication of academic certificates with a proof-of-existence framework, and vehicle life cycle and hotel registry management.
There have been a slew of blockchain projects under development in India. These include Tech Mahindra’s announcement to team up with Dutch firm Quantoz to use blockchain for digital payments, Tata Consultancy’s decision to launch a consumer loyalty program on R3’s Corda.
While the country might be embracing blockchain, the government is skeptical about cryptocurrency business. The Indian government has proposed fines and jail time for cryptocurrency uses in July, and Facebook announced it would not launch its Calibra crypto wallet subsidiary in India due to regulatory issues.
