When Jigisha, a PhD student, was flying for a work trip in late July from Kolkata in India’s eastern state of West Bengal to the country’s capital, New Delhi, the airport was more crowded than usual. But she had ample time and was unfazed by the queue outside the entry gate.

Soon, a uniformed “Digiyatra buddy” signalled her to join one of their “superfast” lines, but she declined. Yet, they kept urging her to register with Digiyatra—a contactless, facial-recognition-based passenger-entry system.

“When I refused to enrol at the kiosk, the staff kept insisting that it was mandatory. I said I was sure it wasn’t and was going to finish my process slowly. That’s when they stopped,” recalled Jigisha, who faced a similar ordeal while returning.

Launched in December, Digiyatra is managed by Digi Yatra Foundation (DYF), a not-for-profit company aimed at streamlining air travel. It is deployed across at least eight government and privately owned airports. The Airports Authority of India (AAI), the public-sector enterprise responsible for civil-aviation infrastructure, holds a 26% stake in DYF. The rest is held by five private airports—Cochin, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

And what’s in it for passengers? Faster entry and security check. The idea here is that those enrolled don’t have to get their ID and flight tickets checked by the Central Industrial Security Force personnel.

“A lot of people just listened to them and signed up. Not as a fast option, but as the [only] option,” Jigisha said.

Moreover, not all passengers have had a uniformly swift experience using Digiyatra. For instance, while registering at airport kiosks, passengers’ ID was sometimes checked twice: once by a Digiyatra associate and then again at the entry gate by a security personnel.

Social media is rife with stories of passengers being aggressively pursued to sign up for Digiyatra. Take Maanvi, for example, who was misdirected to join the Digiyatra queue while travelling from New Delhi to Mumbai.

While writingXExperience at Delhi airport about her experience on the microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter), Maanvi had questioned the reason for obfuscating the choice for passengers—especially when biometric information, “which needs informed consent”, is at stake.

It’s not just the Digiyatra buddies who are pushing travellers to register.