India has become the ‘first country in the world’ to issue Biometric Seafarer Identity Document (BSID) capturing the facial biometric data of seafarers.
Minister of State for Shipping Mansukh Mandaviya launched the project in New Delhi.
Nine data collection centres have been set up at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Noida, Goa, New Mangalore, Kochi, Vizag and Kandla for the issue of BSID.
The total number of existing Indian seafarers who will be required to be issued BSIDs is around 3,50,000.