The govt launched the latest technology of the face-recognition system- DigiYatra for passengers at 3 airports of Delhi, Varanasi and Bengaluru.
Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia launched the DigiYatra system on the Delhi airport, where he mentioned that the data generated through this latest face recognition facility will be stored in an encrypted format and in a decentralized method.
DigiYatra is expected to be unveiled at four more airports of Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada, and Hyderabad by sometime in the month of March next year. Later, it will be rapidly rolled out across all other airports, Jyotiraditya revealed in his briefing.
The government on Thursday launched DigiYatra which will provide a seamless entry and launching process for air passengers at the airports of Varanasi, Bengaluru, and the capital city. He further mentioned that later on the system of DigiYatra will be systematically rolled out in all other airports. Currently, the airlines that operate in these three airports are fundamentally onboard with regard to DigiYatra.
The airline operators of IndiGo, Vistara and Air India are part of DigiYatra. SpiceJet Airlines will soon join the DigiYatra soon according to the details provided by a SpiceJet official. The DigiYatra app will be available on both Android and ioS platforms for domestic travellers at the Delhi airport from Terminal 3
Jyotiraditya said, “First, we thought of a centralized system that would house all the data but then issues of privacy, and data theft, rightfully came up. So, we moved to a decentralized system which would house the passenger information… on the mobile phones of every single passenger.”
As any traveller is flying out, the secured and encrypted information can be provided on the passenger’s phone 24 hours before the journey.
“We have moved to a decentralized system and your data is going to be in an encrypted format and it is going to be residing only in your (passenger) mobile phone… 24 hours after your travel, that data is mandatorily going to be purged from the servers at that airport. The data you upload gets completely wiped out in 24 hours even though it is protected by blockchain technology,” he added.
For availing of the service, a passenger must register the required details on the DigiYatra app using Aadhaar-based validation and a self-image capture. Then, the boarding pass will be scanned and the traveller credentials are shared with the airport authorities. On reaching the airport e-gate, the traveller needs to scan the bar code on the boarding pass and validate his/her identity with the facial recognition system installed there. As the process is completed, the traveller can proceed to the airport via e-gate.
The travelers will then proceed with the standard security procedure before boarding the plane.
Jyotiraditya quipped that DigiYatra will help save time for travellers. He pointed out that generally the time taken is nine minutes per flight boarding at Atlanta airport. DigiYatra will offer a seamless process from the entry point until the embarkation point on the airplanes and no boarding passes or identification by the air travellers. He overwhelmingly highlighted the benefits of facial recognition technology being used at various other international airports in Japan, Atlanta, Singapore, and Dubai.
Identifying that DigiYatra is steadily launched throughout the nation, Jyotiraditya pointed out the Indian system to be far more efficient than other prevailing systems across the world.
