Air Suvidha is scrapped: relief and a positive signal on covid

Subject :Environment

Context:

Starting Tuesday (November 22), passengers travelling to India no longer need to fill forms and upload negative RT-PCR tests on the government’s Air Suvidha portal.

What was the Air Suvidha requirement?

The portal was launched in August 2020
International passengers had to mandatority submit details of their journey and Covid vaccination or testing status on this portal.
The pre-arrival self-registration portal also enabled authorities to ascertain whether a person was arriving from a high-risk region.
When the Omicron variant of Covid-19 spread, the Union Health Ministry mandated submitting details on the portal, including passengers’ 14 day travel history and negative RT-PCR test reports to map if the traveller was arriving from an ‘at-risk’ country.

Criticism against Air Suvidha-

Two- year ban on regular international flights was lifted on March 2022, and the number of international passengers started to increase.
The system failed many a times to cope with the increased number of international passengers.
Travellers often failed to upload Covid negative certificates due to system failure.

When did India start the process to abolish Air Suvidha?

A plea was filed in March 2022 but action started to be taken from june only.
While the Aviation and Tourism ministries were supporting the abolition of portal but Health ministry was against it.

So has India removed all Covid restrictions for fliers?

The abolition of Air Suvidha is the last Covid restriction to go.
Earlier the government removed the mandatory requirement of wearing face masks on board aircraft.
India’s Covid-era restrictions included limiting the number of domestic flights, ban on regular international flights, fare restrictions, no meal service on board, etc.