Digi Yatra policy is an initiative launched by Ministry of Civil Aviation for biometric boarding system using Facial Recognition Technology. It aims at providing seamless and hassle-free experience for passengers at airports. Its 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 Digi Yatra is done by Airport Operators. Ministry of Civil Aviation does not provide any budgetary support for its implementation. To give wide publicity to Digi Yatra, Airport Operators and Airline Operators are doing in-flight announcements, publicity through boarding passes, providing help desk support and displaying banner and films etc. at the airports. Publicity is also being done through Social Media.Airports Authority of India (AAI) has awarded the work for implementation of Biometric Boarding System at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Varanasi airports.

Digi Yatra is to be implemented across airports in a phased manner. In first phase, Digi Yatra has been launched on 01.12.2022 at Delhi, Bangalore and Varanasi Airports for providing passengers contactless, paperless check-in and boarding process based on facial biometrics. The implementation of Digi Yatra under phase I is also planned at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Hyderabad Airports by March 2023 and across various airports in the country in phased manner. Digital transformation of aviation sector is an ongoing endeavour. As per requirement, the digitisation of various processes in aviation sector is undertaken.

M/s Dataevolve Solutions has built FRT based Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem. It has been selected through a national start-up challenge run by NitiAayog under the Atal Innovation Mission.

Digi Yatra is a voluntary facility for providing passengers seamless and hassle-free experience at the Airports. In the Digi Yatra process, there is no 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 Digi Yatra ID needs to be validated. The data is purged from the system within 24 hours of flight. Facilities with implementation of the Digi Yatra provides Touchless Passenger Validation through FRT which results in saving time at various touchpoints like entry to airport, Security Hold Area (SHA) and Boarding Area with no CISF intervention.

This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Civil Aviation Gen.

(Dr) V. K. Singh,(Retd) in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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