Under this, new and renewed passports will be fitted with a microchip that will hold all biometric information regarding the applicants.
Presenting the Union Budget 2022-23, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday, February 1, 2022, said e-passports with the embedded chip will be rolled out this year.
The Ministry of External Affairs on January 7 signed an agreement with Tata Consultancy Services Limited for the second phase of the Passport Seva Programme (PSP), one of the several Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) of the Government of India. The latest agreement will facilitate the next phase of the PSP termed PSP-V2.0.
Also read: Budget 2022 – 5G Mobile Services Rollout Within 2022-23, Says Nirmala Sitharaman
Also read: Digital Rupee with Blockchain from RBI Coming Up
The new programme is expected to have technology upgrade including the use of latest biometrics technology, Artificial Intelligence, Advance Data Analytics, Chat-Bot, Auto-response, Natural Language Processing, Cloud Enablement. The newest feature under the PSP-V2.0 will be the issuance of the new generation of passports called e-passports. Under this, new and renewed passports will be fitted with a microchip that will hold all biometric information regarding the applicants.
Also read: Crypto Tax? 30% Tax for Digital Assets, Highest Tax Band in India
Current passports are scanned at the immigration counters to reveal the travel record of the citizen using the same document and the e-passport is also expected to perform the same function. However, unlike the current passports, the e-passport users will have physical storage of their biometric data in a chip which will reduce risk of data leakage.