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Government to roll out e-passport with electronic chips in India

e-passport-india

Indian government has decided to roll out e-passport with electronic chips and bio-metric details.

The Ministry of External Affairs will roll out chip-embedded e-passports, which can be incorporated with passports ensuring the information can be verified electronically.

The e-passport is likely to secure the data and curb the menace of fake passports. An e-Passport contains an electronic chip that holds the same information printed on the passport’s data page.

The government eased the rules for obtaining passports for various categories, including single mothers, orphans, sadhus and adopted children on December 23, 2016.

The important changes in rules were put in place, after considering various requests and demands from different groups of people.

The process of getting the duplicate passport also will be easy when it comes to e-passport.

More than half of the nations across the globe, including Germany, Italy and Ghana already have bio-metric e-passports.

What is Bio-metric passport?

Biometric passports are commonly known as digital passports or e-passports. Biometric passport is a combined paper and electronic passport that consist of biometric information to identify the traveler.

A contactless smart card technology, including a microprocessor chip and antenna will be embedded somewhere inside or outside of the passport say like on front/back cover or in center page.

e-passport-logo
  e-passport logo

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used to authenticate the data stored electronically in the passport chip making it expensive and difficult to forge when all security mechanisms are fully and correctly implemented.

Face recognition, fingerprint recognition and iris recognition are the widely used bio-metric standards.

Only the digital image (usually in JPEG or JPEG2000 format) of each bio-metric feature is actually stored in the chip. The comparison of bio-metric features is performed outside the passport chip by electronic border control systems (e-borders).

border-control-process

The typical work-flow of an automatic border control system (eGate).

What is the benefits of bio-metric passports?

There are so many benefits for having an e-passport with you. Here are some of the advantages of e-passport.

Firstly it makes easier passport control procedures in airports.

Travelers will cross borders faster than it was earlier because their identities will be checked on computer.

Bio-metric passports will help us in crime investigation with the bio-metric evidences left on the place of crime.

How it will be beneficent for travelers?

Not only the government but also the travelers will get the benefits of e-passport. There are chances to loss our passport. It can be during your travel or can be a theft at a foreign country.

Once you lost passport, there is no alternative for that. But what you will do if you are in a foreign country?

The bio-metric passport will help you here since your bio-metric information will be available in the database.

There disadvantages also like misusing the chips of innocent people. E-passports are not perfect in all aspects but it has more advantages than disadvantages.

Share this article if you find useful for others also.

Image credits – networkedindia.com , wikipedia

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