2,605 passengers at Delhi Airport’s T3 terminal have registered for the Biometric Enabled Seamless Travel project, which allows passengers to scan their faces at a kiosk before checking-in to their flights, Minister of State in the Civil Aviation Ministry, Hardeep Singh Puri informed Lok Sabha on December 12. The Indian government had launched the DigiYatra scheme in 2018, which allows automatic processing of passengers based on a facial recognition system at check points like: entry to airport, security check and aircraft boarding. While responding to questions raised by Indhiya Jananayaga Katchi MP T.R. Paarivendhar, Suri further informed the House that airports at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Cochin, Mumbai and Delhi are covered in the first phase of the DigiYatra rollout. Facial recognition systems for biometric authentication of passengers first went active at the Delhi airport’s terminal 3 for Vistara passengers in September, on a trial basis, we had reported. The official launch of these systems at other terminals is contingent upon a successful completion of this trial. At the time, the airport had told us that it wasn’t mandatory for passengers to go check-in through the face scanning kiosks, and willing passengers would have to sign a consent form to have to go through these systems. The airport had also said that the biometric details of passengers will be stored temporarily and will be deleted after their flight has departed, and that the airport will not store biometrics of passengers. However, the Delhi airport's claims were only for…
