‘Digi Yatra could be expanded to hotels, rail travel, public places’
- Digi Yatra may be implemented at hotels and public places such as historical monuments
Highlights:
- A prototype for this use-case has been developed and discussions are ongoing with government agencies such as the Tourism Ministry.
- The vision is to create a travel stack for seamless movement across India.
- This would enhance travel experience for a tourist who has to produce a passport for check-in at a hotel or at police stations for verification.
- Digi Yatra could also be used for rail travel
- Nationals of certain countries such as Pakistan are required to report their arrival and intended departure at each place of stay within 24 hours at the nearest police station.
- Tourists of other nationalities who hold a visa for a period of more than 180 days, are also required to register at the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO).
- Extending Digi Yatra to hotels and public places would prevent data leakage as people often tend to share unencrypted forms of identity documents through photocopies and screenshots, whereas Digi Yatra ID does not carry any personally identifiable information.
- The Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem only saves a hash value or a numerical value that identifies the content of the file so that none of the data items shared by passengers at the time of registering on the app can be leaked anywhere.
Digi Yatra initiative
- The Digi Yatra initiative is digital processing of air travelers which uses their biometrics such as a facial scan instead of a boarding pass to enable paperless movement through various checkpoints at an airport.
- The initiative was rolled out at airports in December 2022, and today covers 14 airports while 15 more airports will be included by the end of 2024.
- The primary aim of the initiative at the time its policy document was launched in 2017 was to improve passenger throughput (or number of passengers passing through various checkpoints) at airports.
- This would achieve the objective of enhancing airport infrastructure needed to cater to increasing passenger volumes by ensuring more efficient airport operations, alongside physical expansion of airports in the country.
- But the proposed use-case for hotels and other public places implies that the role for Digi Yatra could extend beyond air travel.
- The Digi Yatra Foundation itself is a not-for-profit private company which is a consortium of five private airports that have a combined shareholding of 74%, and the Airports Authority of India which holds the remaining 26% share.
Prelims Takeaway
- Digi Yatra Initiative
- Data Leakage