APAAR Student ID (One Nation One Student ID)

What is the APAAR Student ID?

APAAR ID, short for Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry, is a unique 12-digit identification number issued to students in India under the Ministry of Education's "One Nation, One Student ID" initiative. The programme flows from the National Education Policy 2020 and is operated by the Department of School Education and Literacy for school students, with the official portal at apaar.education.gov.in. Delivery of the ID card into DigiLocker is handled by the Digital India Corporation under MeitY.

According to the Ministry of Education, more than 26.30 crore verified APAAR IDs had been generated as of June 2026, up from over 15.48 crore as of 31 March 2026. The fastest-growing student identity record in the country.

The purpose of the APAAR ID is to give each learner one permanent academic account that outlives any single school, board or university. Against that number, the system stores scorecards, marksheets, gradesheets, degrees, diplomas, certificates and co-curricular achievements, all accessible through the student's DigiLocker. Where a student changes school mid-year, moves state, or transfers between a school board and a skill programme, the academic record travels with the APAAR ID instead of being reconstructed from paper files.

How APAAR fits with two other systems

• UDISE+ is the school education database. It issues each enrolled student a PEN (Permanent Education Number), and the APAAR ID is generated against that PEN. No PEN, no APAAR ID.
• DigiLocker is where the APAAR ID card is delivered. As soon as the ID is generated, it is pushed into the student's DigiLocker account and appears in the Issued Documents section.
• The Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) is the credit ledger. APAAR is integrated with ABC so that credits earned under the NEP credit framework are banked against the student's permanent identity and can be transferred between institutions.

Who is eligible for an APAAR ID?

A student can get an APAAR ID if:

• The student is enrolled in a school covered by UDISE+ and already holds a valid PEN. This is the hard prerequisite.
• The student has an Aadhaar number, and the name on Aadhaar matches the name recorded in UDISE+.
• A parent or guardian has submitted the consent form for a student under

18. The APAAR portal describes this consent as filled voluntarily by parents.

• Demographic details; date of birth, gender, mother's name, father's name and mobile number; are available and correct in the school record.

Higher education students obtain the equivalent identity through their institution's ABC registration route rather than through UDISE+, since the PEN applies to school education.

A student cannot get an APAAR ID if:

• No PEN exists in UDISE+. The generation step has nothing to attach the ID to. The school must complete UDISE+ enrolment first.
• No Aadhaar number is available for the student, since authentication depends on it.
• The name, date of birth or gender does not match between the school record and Aadhaar. Generation will fail until one of the two records is corrected.
• Parental consent has not been given for a minor. The school cannot proceed without it.

Note the practical position on whether APAAR is compulsory. The portal frames parental consent as voluntary, and a parent who does not wish to give consent is not required to sign the form. At the same time, most schools are generating IDs for their full enrolment, and institutions increasingly use the APAAR ID for board registration, credit transfer and scholarship linkage. Parents who decline should understand what they are opting out of rather than assume nothing follows.

What documents and details are required for an APAAR ID?

Note what is not on this list: no birth certificate upload, no photograph submission, no affidavit, no fee receipt. The process runs on data the school already holds plus an Aadhaar authentication.

How to get an APAAR ID

1. Wait for the school's intimation, or approach the school directly. The school informs parents about APAAR and hands out or shares the consent form. Generation is a school-side process; there is no public self-registration form on which a parent can create an APAAR ID alone.
2. Verify the student's demographic details at the school. Check that the name, date of birth, gender, and parents' names in the school's UDISE+ record match the Aadhaar record character for character. Correct any mismatch before consent is submitted, this is the step that saves weeks later.
3. Submit the parental consent form. For a student under 18, the parent or guardian fills and returns the consent form to the school. Consent is given voluntarily.
4. Let the school complete identity authentication against Aadhaar using the student's details.
5. The UDISE+ system generates the APAAR ID against the student's PEN. The 12-digit number is created automatically once authentication succeeds.
6. Collect the ID from DigiLocker. The APAAR ID card is pushed into the student's DigiLocker account, where it appears under Issued Documents. Open DigiLocker with the registered mobile number to download or view the virtual card.
7. Verify the number on apaar.education.gov.in using the portal's APAAR lookup option, and keep a copy of the card.

How to get an APAAR ID offline or through a CSC

1. Go to the school office with the student's Aadhaar card and school ID. The class teacher or the school's UDISE+ nodal staff member handles APAAR generation.
2. Ask which specific field failed if the school reports that generation did not succeed. Almost always it is a name or date-of-birth mismatch with Aadhaar.
3. Correct the mismatch — either update Aadhaar at an Aadhaar Seva Kendra, or ask the school to correct the UDISE+ record, whichever field is actually wrong.
4. Use a Common Service Centre if the school is unable to help. APAAR IDs can also be generated through the nearest CSC, which the Ministry has enabled specifically for remote and underserved areas.
5. Ask the school for the printed number if the family has no smartphone for DigiLocker. The APAAR ID is recorded in the school's UDISE+ system and can be read out or written on the student's record.

Is there any fee for an APAAR ID?

No. APAAR ID generation is completely free. There is no application fee, no service charge, no DigiLocker charge and nothing payable to the school. The whole process runs inside government systems the school already uses.

This is worth stating plainly because APAAR is exactly the kind of new, unfamiliar, "everyone needs it" document that attracts middlemen. Since APAAR was introduced, cyber cafés, private websites and agents have offered "APAAR ID registration" for a fee. None of them is authorised, and none of them can even do the job, the ID is generated by the school inside UDISE+, not by any outside party filling a form. If a website asks a parent to upload the child's Aadhaar and pay a fee for an APAAR ID, it is at best useless and at worst an identity-theft risk involving a minor's Aadhaar data.

The only legitimate routes are the student's own school or institution, and a Common Service Centre where the government has enabled assisted generation.

How to check your APAAR ID status

1. Open DigiLocker with the student's registered mobile number and look in Issued Documents. If the APAAR card is there, the ID has been generated.
2. If it is not there, ask the school to check the student's status in UDISE+. The school can see whether the record is pending consent, pending authentication, or failed.
3. Use the APAAR lookup option on apaar.education.gov.in to retrieve or confirm a provisional APAAR number.
4. For higher education, check the ABC portal account linked to the institution's registration.

Generation is normally quick once authentication succeeds. The ID is created by the system rather than approved by an officer. Delays that stretch into weeks are almost always a stuck record, not a queue, so escalate to the school rather than waiting.

Common reasons APAAR generation fails, and how to fix them

• Name mismatch with Aadhaar. The leading cause. "Rahul Kumar Sharma" in school records against "Rahul K Sharma" on Aadhaar will fail. Decide which is correct, then update the other.
• Date of birth mismatch. School admission records and Aadhaar often differ by a year for children admitted before a birth certificate was produced. Fix the incorrect one; the birth certificate is the authority.
• No PEN allotted. The student's UDISE+ enrolment is incomplete. Nothing can proceed until the school completes it.
• Consent form not submitted or incomplete. Check the form was signed by a parent or guardian and returned to the school.
• Mobile number not linked to Aadhaar or not reachable, so authentication or DigiLocker access fails.
• Student changed school mid-year. The record may still sit with the previous school in UDISE+. Ask the new school to pull the record across.
• Duplicate records where a student was enrolled twice in UDISE+. The school must deduplicate before generation succeeds.

Corrections to school data go through the school and the district education office. Corrections to Aadhaar go through an Aadhaar Seva Kendra. Neither can be done from the APAAR portal itself, which is why parents who try to fix a mismatch online get nowhere.

Help and grievance redressal

• APAAR helpline: 1800-889-3511 (toll-free)
• Support tickets: support.abc.gov.in, where a query can be logged and tracked
• Official portal: apaar.education.gov.in, which also carries the user manual and how-to videos
• First line of help: the student's own school. Most APAAR problems are data problems in the school's UDISE+ record and are fixed fastest there.

For a higher education student, raise the issue with the institution's ABC nodal officer, since the credit account and the identity are managed through the institution's registration on the Academic Bank of Credits rather than through UDISE+.

How to apply for an APAAR ID as a higher education student

School students get an APAAR ID automatically once their school runs the UDISE+ process described above. Higher education students (college, university, polytechnic, diploma) get to the same 12-digit identity through a different door: the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC), not UDISE+, since a PEN does not apply once a student leaves school education.

1. Check with the institution's admission or examination cell first. Most colleges and universities now generate ABC/APAAR IDs in bulk for enrolled students as part of admission or the start of the academic year. Ask whether this has already been done before creating one separately, a duplicate ID for the same student causes linkage problems later.
2. If the institution has not generated one, register on the ABC portal at abc.gov.in. The student signs in using DigiLocker credentials, since ABC authentication runs through DigiLocker rather than a separate password.
3. Authenticate with Aadhaar through DigiLocker. The same rule that applies to school students applies here: the name, date of birth and gender pulled from Aadhaar must match what the institution has on record for the student. A mismatch blocks ID creation exactly as it does at school level.
4. Link the institution and course. Once authenticated, the student's college or university and enrolment details are attached to the ABC account, and the system issues the APAAR ID against that registration.
5. Confirm the ID has synced back to the institution's records. The examination or academic section should be able to see the student's APAAR/ABC ID against their roll number, this is what allows credits, semester marksheets and degrees to be banked against the identity later.
6. Retrieve the ID card from DigiLocker, under Issued Documents, the same location where school-generated APAAR cards appear.

There is no fee at any step of this process, and no separate "application form" beyond the DigiLocker-based authentication above. A student who is asked to pay an agent, cyber café or third-party website to "apply for APAAR" at the college level is dealing with the same kind of unauthorised middleman that operates around school-level APAAR, since the actual issuance happens only through the institution's ABC registration and DigiLocker, never through an outside form.

A student who already has a school-issued APAAR ID from Class 12 does not need a new one in college. The same permanent number carries forward and simply gets linked to the higher education institution and its ABC account, which is the entire point of a single lifelong academic identity.