Air Suvidha is scrapped: relief and a positive signal on covid
- November 23, 2022
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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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.