Railway rolls out Aadhaar-based biometric attendance
New Delhi: Indian Railways has introduced an Aadhaar-based biometric verification or attendance system for its Ticket Checking personnel.
This aims to improve passenger convenience and transparency of operations, the railway ministry announced on Tuesday.
The ministry also announced that the first completely digital Ticket Examiner (TTE) lobby was made functional at Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction (earlier Mughalsarai) in the East Central Railway zone on August 29. This marks the beginning of a countrywide redesign of staff management procedures.
The innovative system, which combines the authentication with real-time attendance capture, has already been implemented in several divisions, namely Banaras (Northern Railway), Sonpur (East Central Railway), Ratlam (Western Railway), and Malda (Eastern Railway).
Major junctions like CSMT Mumbai, Pune, Solapur (Central Railway), Mysore (South Western Railway), Bhopal (West Central Railway), and Madurai, Palghat, and Trichy (Southern Railway) have gone in for the technology.
Regions such as North Central, North Eastern, and North Western Railways are rolling out the system in a phased manner, and Jammu Division (Northern Railway) will join the network in the near future.
The biometric system replaces conventional attendance practices, with employees signing on and off through fingerprint or iris scans tied to their Aadhaar identity.
This tamper-proof solution provides accurate recording of working time, duty status, and lobby operations in real time. It eliminates discrepancies and promotes transparency.
Railway authorities stressed that the data syncs with Hand Held Terminals (HHTs) utilised by employees without any difficulty.
The system also integrates with electronic duty rosters so that supervisors are able to maximise deployment through live updates. The effort is intended to overcome long-standing issues of staff management, such as absenteeism and errors in manual record keeping.
By automating attendance, the Railways can now track workforce availability in real time, simplify shift assignment, and maintain conformance with duty rosters.
The system also complies with strict norms of privacy, encrypted storage of data, and access limitations for authorised officials.
The officials emphasised the larger vision: “This is not about digitising attendance—it’s a shift in paradigm in how we operate on-ground. Real-time tracking enables us to react dynamically to passenger requirements. Whether it is to send additional staff during peak travel seasons or to react to sudden shortages.”
The decision is likely to indirectly benefit millions of commuters by cutting into ticket-checking delays and providing improved staff availability on board trains and stations.
Greater accountability, officials contend, will prevent malpractice and enhance the consistency of services, part of Indian Railways’ larger agenda to utilise state-of-the-art technology for the people.
As it grows, the Railways intends to add analytics to forecast staff requirements and further improve operational effectiveness. Meanwhile, the implementation represents a badge of honour for the company’s dedication to reconciling tradition with innovation, one biometric scan at a time.
