Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia Launches Digi Yatra for 3 Airports in India
Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia
Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) launched ‘Digi Yatra’ from the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New Delhi (Delhi) for three airports in India, namely New Delhi, Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), and Bengaluru (Karnataka).
- Digi Yatra was designed to use Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) to achieve contactless, seamless passenger processing at airports.
Key Points:
i.In the initial phase, Digi Yatra will be introduced in 7 airports, starting with the first 3: Delhi, Bengaluru, and Varanasi.
- It will be followed by 4 airports by March 2023: Hyderabad (Telangana), Kolkata (West Bengal), Pune (Maharashtra), and Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh).
ii.Currently, the service is only available to domestic flight passengers.
iii.With Digi Yatra, India will join the ranks of world-class airports such as Heathrow in London, the United Kingdom (UK), and Atlanta in the United States of America (USA).
Digi Yatra project
i.The Digi Yatra project is conceived by Digi Yatra Foundation under the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
- Digi Yatra platform is built on 4 key pillars: Connected Passengers, Connected Airports, Connected Flights, & Connected Systems.
ii.The project envisions any traveller passing through multiple airport checkpoints using paperless and contactless processing, establishing their identity with facial features and linking it to their boarding card.
iii.One-time registration (OTR) on the Digi Yatra app using Aadhar-based validation and a self-image capture is required in order to access this facility.
- There is no centralThere is no central storage of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the project’s privacy features.iv.The ID and travel credentials of passengers are maintained in a secure wallet on the passenger’s smartphone.
- Blockchain technology will be used to process the uploaded data, and all data will be deleted from the servers 24 hours after use.