Ahmedabad: Digi Yatra, the facial recognition-based airport travel system designed to speed up passenger movement, is struggling to identify some identical twins.
Two sets of twins from Ahmedabad have reported repeated authentication failures when travelling together, prompting one family to approach the Ministry of Civil Aviation for a permanent solution, according to a TOI report.
City-based businessmen and identical twins Sanjeev and Rajeev Chhajer said they have repeatedly been forced out of the Digi Yatra fast-track lane and into manual identity verification because the system fails to distinguish between them.
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In their latest experience on July 10, Sanjeev said he was travelling from Ahmedabad to Delhi on IndiGo flight 6E 2179 when the Digi Yatra gate displayed the message "Too Many Access". Rajeev encountered the same error. The brothers said the issue resurfaced at the security checkpoint, delaying their journey.
Instead of using the dedicated Digi Yatra lane, airport staff asked one of them to undergo manual identity verification despite both being registered on the Digi Yatra platform.
"The entire point of enrolling on the platform is to avoid queues and save time. If one of us has to leave the queue every time we travel together, the benefit is lost," Sanjeev said.
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"This of course indicates that the system is secure but that doesn’t mean genuine people face troubles," he added.
Appeal to the aviation ministry
In a letter to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Sanjeev said the facial recognition system may be interpreting their highly similar facial features as duplicate or repeated access attempts. He urged the ministry to examine whether the facial recognition algorithm requires additional safeguards for identical twins and to provide a permanent solution or an alternative verification process.
An airport source told TOI that the issue could not be resolved at the airport level.
"We’re sure twins may have travelled through our airport by far. However, no such issue has been flagged to the airport operator by far. This cannot be resolved at airport level and instead, requires ministerial intervention," the source said.
Another similar case
The problem is not confined to one family. Twenty-four-year-old identical twins Keya Patel and Hiya Patel from Ahmedabad said they face similar issues whenever they travel together, especially during holiday periods.
"My twin daughters usually avoid Digi Yatra because one of them almost always gets flagged. They end up standing in the manual queue anyway," their mother, Trupti Patel, said.
The sisters said the authentication issue does not occur when they travel separately. They believe the problem arises only when both of them attempt to use the facial recognition gates at around the same time.
The families have urged authorities to examine whether the issue affects other identical twins and refine Digi Yatra's facial recognition system so they can use the service without repeated verification failures.
(With inputs from TOI)
