The National Education Policy 2020 envisages seamless mobility of students across institutions. How do NAD, ABC, and APAAR operationalise this vision?

NEP 2020's Multiple Entry–Multiple Exit and credit-transfer promise remains theoretical as long as academic records stay paper-based and locked inside issuing institutions. NAD, ABC and APAAR supply the digital public infrastructure that converts this promise into practice — respectively the verified record base, the credit ledger, and the portable learner identity.

NAD — authenticated record base

• A 24×7 online depository for degrees, diplomas, mark sheets and skill awards, built on the dematerialisation model of the securities depository system [1]
• Operationalised under UGC through NSDL Database Management Ltd and CDSL Ventures Ltd; institutions certify authenticity of data, depositories ensure integrity [4]
• Delivered through DigiLocker since 2020, enabling consent-based, real-time verification and removing the delay and cost of physically moving transcripts between institutions [1]

ABC — the credit ledger

• A virtual store-house letting students accumulate, transfer and redeem credits across higher education institutions without losing academic progress [2]
• NAD acts as the backbone of ABC: credits are registered in ABC, while final redemption and certificate issuance flow back through the NAD platform [3]
• Compliance is being enforced — UGC mandated all HEIs to upload credit data for 2025 examinations on the NAD-ABC portal by 30 June 2026 [2]

APAAR — the portable identity

• A 12-digit unique ID under "One Nation, One Student ID", threading a learner's records from school to higher education [2]
• 26.35 crore verified APAAR IDs generated as of July 2026 — the scale a national mobility ecosystem requires [2]
• It resolves identity-matching: stored credits are unusable unless a student is uniquely traceable across institutions [2]

APAAR ID (who the learner is)
      ↓
ABC (credits earned, transferred, redeemed)
      ↓
NAD / DigiLocker (verified, shareable award)

Caption: the three layers of NEP's mobility stack.

Together, these three layers turn mobility from an administrative concession into a verifiable entitlement, letting a learner pause, switch discipline or change institution without forfeiting effort. Sustaining this requires last-mile digital capacity in smaller colleges and strong consent and data-protection safeguards, so that the NEP's vision of a flexible, learner-centric system is realised equitably.