'My Documents Keep Getting Rejected': Delhi Residents Speak Out on Duplicate Image Crisis in Government Portals

Dozens of Delhi residents say they have been blocked from completing applications on government digital portals after automated systems wrongly flag their uploaded photographs as duplicates — rejecting identity documents, pension registrations and ration card renewals with no clear pathway for appeal. The problem, which community welfare workers in at least three districts describe as worsening since the Delhi government's push to digitise citizen services through its e-District portal accelerated this year, is forcing families to make repeated trips to already crowded facilitation centres.

The timing matters. Delhi's Unified District Services initiative, which consolidates more than 50 citizen-facing services under a single login on the e-District platform, has been actively promoted across municipal wards since January 2026 as an efficiency measure. The more residents the system pulls in, the more likely its image-matching algorithm — designed to prevent duplicate registrations — is to generate false positives, particularly for applicants using low-resolution phone cameras in poor lighting.

Where the Problem Bites Hardest

The complaints are concentrated in older, denser neighbourhoods. At the Chandni Chowk Jan Seva Kendra on Nai Sarak, staff handling walk-in applicants say a significant share of visitors in recent weeks have arrived specifically because an online submission was rejected for a duplicate image error. In Mustafabad, in north-east Delhi, residents attempting to renew documentation after flood-related address changes last monsoon season are among those caught in the loop. The Dwarka Sub-City facilitation centre, which serves one of Delhi's largest planned residential clusters, has also seen queues build on weekday mornings as people seek manual overrides for digitally stalled applications.

The frustration is sharpest among older applicants and daily-wage workers who cannot afford multiple half-day absences from work. Many describe uploading a photograph only to receive an automated rejection notice that cites a duplicate image match without specifying which earlier record triggered the flag — leaving the applicant with no information about what to change or correct. Welfare assistance workers at the Sewa Kendra run by the Aam Aadmi Party government in Rohini Sector 7 say they have begun advising residents to bring printed copies of all previous portal submissions as proof that no genuine duplicate exists.

What the Data Suggests

India's digital governance infrastructure has expanded at pace. According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's annual report for 2024-25, the e-District scheme had processed more than 600 million transactions nationally by March 2025, with Delhi among the top-performing states by volume. That scale, combined with image-matching algorithms trained on older, smaller datasets, creates a statistical certainty of false matches at high throughput — a problem that digital governance researchers at institutions including IIT Delhi have flagged in published work on automated identity systems.

The cost falls on residents in concrete ways. A ration card renewal delayed by a duplicate image flag can mean a family misses a month of subsidised grain from a Public Distribution System outlet. Pension disbursements under the Delhi government's Mukhyamantri Tirth Yatra Yojana and social security schemes are similarly tied to verified portal accounts. Each rejected submission that goes uncorrected effectively suspends the benefit.

The Delhi government's IT department has not issued a public advisory on the duplicate image error rate, and no correction mechanism appears on the e-District portal's help page as of this week. Residents and welfare workers suggest the most practical immediate steps: photograph in bright, even natural light against a plain white or light-grey wall, use a file size between 20 KB and 50 KB as specified in portal guidelines, and carry the rejection SMS or email to the nearest Jan Seva Kendra to request a supervised manual re-upload. Anyone whose application remains blocked after two rejection cycles is entitled under Delhi's Citizen Charter to a grievance acknowledgement within seven working days — a provision that advocacy groups say few applicants currently know to invoke.