What is Digi Yatra? What are its objectives?

The Digi Yatra initiative aims to promote the digital processing of passengers for paper­less and seamless movement through various checkpoints at airports such as the entry gate, security check area and boarding gate. The Digi Yatra policy was unveiled by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in 2018 as an entirely voluntary programme.

After some delay, it was rolled out in December 2022 at three airports, including Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. Today, it is present at 13 airports and will be expanded to 24 more airports in 2024.

The Digi Yatra app is not owned by the government but by a consortium called the Digi Yatra Foundation whose shareholders comprise the Airports Authority of India and five private airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kochi. The government does not provide any funding for its implementation, and airports are required to spend from their kitty.

The implementation involves an app that passengers can download. They must provide their name, mobile, email address and Aadhaar document to register. They also have to upload a selfie to match their image with the one on the Aadhaar. These two steps lead to the creation of a Digi Yatra travel id. When passengers upload their air tickets, the Digi Yatra id gets updated with their travel details. At airports, passengers scan their boarding pass at an e­gate and look into a camera that captures their image.

Once the face verification is successful, the e­gate opens. This also creates the passenger data­set which is a combination of their facial scan and PNR. This data is then used as a single token at the remaining checkpoints so that a passenger can simply zip through them with a mere facial scan without the need to produce a boarding pass. The aim is to improve operational efficiency and allow faster processing of passengers, allowing airlines to track delayed passengers and enhancing security by ensuring there is no exchange of passes among passengers or wrong boarding.

What are the issues about implementation?

The government maintains that there is no central storage of a passenger’s data, which is encrypted and stored in a secure wallet on his or her mobile device. Though the data is shared with the departure airport on the day of travel, it is purged within 24 hours.

According to a detailed analysis by the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Digi Yatra policy states that the airports using the Digi Yatra Biometric Boarding System will adhere to the data protection law as mandated by the Government of India. But the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 was passed by Parliament in August 2023 and the rules are yet to be framed.

The Bill has also been criticised for giving the government broad powers to exempt any of its agencies from all its provisions. Additionally, these exemptions are also granted in the Digi Yatra policy. According to the policy document, “any security agency, Bureau of Immigration or other government agency may be given access to the passenger data based on the current/existing protocols prevalent at that time.” It also provides that the Biometric Boarding System will “have the ability to change the data purge settings based on security requirements on a need basis.”