(a) whether the Ministry of Home Affairs has turned down a Tourism Ministry proposal to do away withobtaining bio-metric data of foreigners travelling on normal tourist visa before issuance of the travel document;
(b) if so, the reasons for rejecting the proposal; and
(c) the assessment made by the Government on its impact on the tourist inflow into the country?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS
(SHRI KIREN RIJIJU)
(a to c) There is no proposal to do away with the capturing of biometric of foreigners traveling to India on normal tourist visa.
At present IVFRT (Immigration Visa Foreigners Registration and Tracking) project is being implemented for smoothening the Visa application and issuance process as well as strengthening and tracking the movement of Foreigners within the Country. In this project there is provision of capturing biometrics of all the Foreigners visiting India. Till now, Biometric enrollment system under the project has been implemented in 76 Indian Missions abroad and remaining are being implemented in phased manner based on infrastructure and site readiness.
Biometrics enrollment is one of the critical security components of IVFRT for authentication and authorization of foreigners visiting India and after sufficient interministerial consultations it has been decided to speedily implement the same.
Government of Indian has launched e-Tourist Visa facility to attract more foreign tourists. The scheme has been extended to 74 countries till date. Biometrics of the foreigners coming on e-Tourist Visa is being captured on arrival. Since the launch of scheme in Nov 2014 about 200000 (Two lac) e-visas have been issued under the scheme.
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