New Delhi: The National Academic Depository (NAD) which is a 24 X 7 online store house of academic awards digitally lodged by various academic institutions / school boards / eligibility assessment bodies has been established. The academic awards to be lodged on NAD shall cover degrees, diplomas, certificates, mark-sheets including awards issued for skill development.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has been designated as authorized body to operationalise NAD. NAD comprises of two interoperable digital depositories viz., NDSL Database Management Limited (NDML) and CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL). Maintenance of academic awards in a digital depository not only enables online access, retrieval and verification of these awards, but also helps eliminating fraudulent practices such as forgoing of certificates and mark-sheets etc.

The Aadhaar will be used for registration and usage of the digital database. However, in the event of non-availability of Aadhaar, a unique NAD ID will be generated to facilitate digital services to NAD users.

This information was given by the Minister of State (HRD), Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey on 17 July 2017 in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question.

National Academic Depository (NAD) is a National System set-up by Ministry of Human Resources Development and University Grants Commission to facilitate academic institutions to digitally, securely and quickly issue online academic awards to the students directly in their online NAD Account. The student can access certificate at any time and authorise employers, banks to view and verify the certificates. No more need to carry originals, submit attested photocopies, wait for verification of documents.

The NAD was officially launched by the President Mr Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi on 09 July 2017 on the sideline of National Convention on Digitization in Higher Education, organized by Ministry of HRD.