The number of passengers who have installed the Digi Yatra application on their mobile phones has crossed one million this week. Since its inauguration by Minister of Civil Aviation and Steel Jyotiraditya M. Scindia on 1st December 2022, 1.746 million people have used this facility.

The Digi Yatra policy is an initiative for a biometric boarding system using Facial Recognition Technology at airports. 

The Digi Yatra was initially launched at three airports, New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Varanasi in December 2022 which was followed by Vijayawada, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Pune in April 2023.

Digi Yatra is an initiative of the Ministry of Civil Aviation for a biometric boarding system using Facial biometric verification Technology. 

It aims at providing a seamless and hassle-free experience for passengers at airports. Its main objective is to enhance the passenger experience by eliminating the need for manual verification of tickets and ID at multiple touch points and to achieve better throughput through existing infrastructure using a Digital Framework.

In the Digi Yatra process, there is no central storage of passengers Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data. All the passengers’ data is encrypted and stored in the wallet of the passengers’ smartphone and shared only for a limited time duration with the airport of travel origin where the passenger's Digi Yatra ID needs to be validated. The data is purged from the system within 24 hours of the flight. The data is shared by passengers directly, only when they travel and only to the origin Airport. The data cannot be used by any other entity since it's encrypted and cannot be shared with any stakeholders.

Key Takeaways

• In the first phase, Digi Yatra has been launched at Delhi, Bangalore and Varanasi Airports in December 2022. 

• Digi Yatra’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. 

• 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.