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India links airport facial recognition to intelligence grid for national security
Government will use Natgrid to access data relating to driving licence, vehicle registration, Aadhaar, airline data, railway passengers, passport and travel details of foreigners and Indians
- PUBLISHED: Wed 24 Jun 2026, 8:14 PM
Facial recognition cameras at six major Indian airports will be linked to a data fusion centre in Delhi along with feed from 150,000 surveillance cameras at vital installations across India and integrated with the National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) to boost real-time monitoring, identifying suspects and supporting law enforcement agencies.
The facial recognition cameras at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata will be integrated with Natgrid in a move to create an integrated command and control centre at vital installations in the country, revealed Praveer Ranjan, director-general, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).
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The force has 359 units under its security umbrella at over 70 civil airports, and aerospace, nuclear and power plants in the country. The force, which also provides service at a dozen major seaports in the country, will soon be covering other major and non-major of India’s 250 ports, added Ranjan.
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The Indian government has asked state governments to use Natgrid to access data including those relating to driving licence, vehicle registration, Aadhaar, airline data, railway passengers, bank records, FASTAg (an electronic toll collection system), passport and travel details of foreigners and Indians, suspicious transaction reports from Financial Intelligence Unit, as well as extract and analyse data from social media posts.
Mandatory facial recognition
Earlier this month, India made it mandatory for passengers making international transfers through four major airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – to use its DigiYatra facial recognition-based biometric system, unlike in the past when there were complicated boarding pass scans, passport checks and identity verification at several different points at airports.
Using DigiYatra enables passengers to pass designated checkpoints with minimal checking of physical documents. According to the government, this is part of India’s ambitious steps to ensure a paperless and contactless airport ecosystem.
DigiYatra has so far enabled over 100 million seamless, passenger journeys on the domestic sector across 38 airports and recorded over 25 million downloads.
The platform has reduced average airport entry processing time from 15 seconds to just five seconds per passenger, said a government spokesperson. Using it ensures a hassles-free journey across the airport, avoiding long queues at counters. Passengers have to upload an Aadhaar-verified selfie and boarding pass on to the DigiYatra app 48 hours before departure.
K. Rammohan Naidu, India’s civil aviation minister, told reporters that passenger traffic across Indian airports is projected to cross 500 million by 2030 and one billion by 2040.
Besides the 38 airports where DigiYatra is currently accessible, 27 more would be added by next year, he said. The app currently supports 11 languages and would be doubled to 22 later this year.
