The Civil Aviation Ministry may soon make Aadhaar or passport mandatory for domestic air travel. The issue of identification came up as a part of the government’s idea of a no-fly list, graded in four levels of offences committed by a flyer.
According to a report published in Times of India on Sunday, the government is in the final stages of sketching out a gradation system and the ban period each level of offence should invite.
“To implement this, we need a foolproof way of identifying passengers. This could be done by asking people to give either Aadhaar or passport number at the time of booking flights. One of these two will be chosen,” a source in the civil aviation ministry told TOI.
According to the report, the government’s list is to be based on existing similar records maintained by private airlines. On the day Shiv Sena’s Ravindra Gaikwad hit Air India’s R Sukumar with his slipper “25 times”, Air India was the first to bring up the topic of a no-fly list consisting of “all unruly passengers”.
The next day, the Federation of Indian Airlines, which has Jet Airways, SpiceJet, IndiGo and GoAir as its members, while announcing a flying ban on Gaikwad also proposed the same idea.
In a letter to Air India CMD, the ministry of civil aviation said that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is amending the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) to facilitate such a list. According to TOI’s source, the draft CAR will be out for public discussion by next week. People will get 30 days to give their suggestions on the same. The government intends to have the changes in effect by June-July.
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