DigiYatra,a MoCA initiative for biometric boarding system for Indian airports using Facial Recognition Technology (FRT), will be implemented at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Hyderabad airports by March 2023.
AAI has awarded the work for implementation of Biometric Boarding System at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Varanasi airports.M/s Dataevolve Solutions has built FRT based DigiYatra Central Ecosystem. It has been selected through a national start-up challenge run by NitiAayog under the Atal Innovation Mission.
To be implemented across airports in a phased manner, in first phase, DigiYatra has been launched on 01.12.2022 at Delhi, Bangalore and Varanasi airports and now also at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Hyderabad, for providing passengers contactless, paperless check-in and boarding process based on facial biometrics.
The above information was shared by Minister of State in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, (Dr) V. K. Singh,(Retd) in a written reply to a question in LokSabha.
DigiYatra’s main objective is to enhance passenger experience by eliminating the need for verification of ticket and ID at multiple touch-points and to achieve better throughput through existing infrastructure using a Digital Framework.
The project is under implementation stage. The expenditure on implementation of DigiYatra is done by Airport Operators. Facilities with implementation of the DigiYatra provides Touchless Passenger Validation through FRT which results in saving time at various touch-points like entry to airport, Security Hold Area (SHA) and Boarding Area with no CISF intervention.
A voluntary facility for providing passengers seamless and hassle-free experience at the Airports, DigiYatra does not entail central storage of passenger’s Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data.
All the passenger’s data is encrypted and stored in the wallet of the passenger’s smartphone and shared only for a limited time duration with the airport of travel origin where passenger’s DigiYatra ID needs to be validated. The data is purged from the system within 24 hours of flight.
