Seamless Aadhaar card-synced check-in at 7 airports

Ajay Banerjee

New Delhi, March 23

Now air travellers will have seamless check-in facility at selected airports in the country. The Aadhaar card-embedded biometrics of the passenger will be synced, allowing the passenger to just scan the bar-code on the ticket and gain check-in, announced Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia while speaking in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

The seven airports include Pune, Kolkata, Vijaywada, Varanasi, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, Scindia said while replying to a debate on Demand of Grants of the General Budget for the fiscal starting April 1.

“The new system will reduce 30 to 40 per cent wait time. At present, there are queues at check-in airports,” Scindia said.

Speaking about expansion of new airports, he said the one at Halwara, located west of Ludhiana, would be ready by March 2023. This is a joint venture between the Punjab government and the Airports Authority of India.

A new terminal building at Srinagar will be built at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore while capacity expansion is being done at the Leh airport that will be completed by August 2023.

Chennai and Kolkata are set to get second airports. In Chennai, two sites have been selected and the state government now has to decide which the final site is. In case of Kolkata, West Bengal has to decide which site it wants for the second airport.

There are demands from smaller cities to provide better connectivity of air transport services. Civil aviation is an important cog in the economy of the country and has an ‘economic multiplier effect’, he added.

“In the past seven days, we have seen 3.82 lakh passengers travelling daily by air. By 2023-24, we expect to have 40 crore passengers per annum.”

The northeast now has 15 airports at the moment, Rajasthan has 7 while UP has 13.

In all, 13 new airports are being made. It includes one at Mopa, Goa, and at Noida near Delhi while several existing airports are being expanded.

On allegations of disinvestment of six airports, Scindia clarified, “We are not selling the airport; we have just leased six airports. At present, the revenue from these six airports is around Rs 550 crore per annum. The lease will earn Rs 904 crore per annum.”

“We are looking for leasing and getting a rental which will be hiked every year as per the increase in passengers,” he said.