New Delhi: Delhi based Sanjay Kapoor almost missed his flight back to India recently, not because he reached the airport late. The Air Suvidha form defeated him.
“Neither was I able to open the site nor could I upload any documents,” Kapoor told The Wire. He said he would have missed his flight but for help from his wife in Delhi, who filled it and sent it to him just in the nick of time. All that trouble was for nought it turns out, as nobody even bothered to look at the form when he reached Delhi.
Moreover, he said, he found out about the form at the airport – there was no info from the airlines when he left Delhi. He had travelled to and from Cyprus on an Emirates flight. “For someone who may be travelling abroad for the first time during the pandemic, it comes as a total surprise. They should ideally have provisions to inform passengers travelling out of the country that they would need to fill this form on their return. But neither the airlines nor the airport authorities provided any information. People can end up missing their flights, which I nearly did,” he cautioned.
This is a situation faced by thousands of India-bound passengers. They either miss their flights or face harassment at boarding points due to the Air Suvidha forms, which were originally designed to facilitate travel to India in light of the restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the main problems with it is technical. Documents, including passport details, vaccination forms etc, have to be uploaded to the form in a prescribed file size, which is virtually impossible on a mobile phone. Often, people do not have high-speed data abroad on Indian phones or the airports’ wi-fi is not adequate. It can be done only on a laptop.
While it has been over a year and a half since these forms were introduced and over six months since they were modified, passengers continue to face difficulties due to them as neither the airlines, the airports nor the concerned ministries – the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) – provide any prior information about these mandatory forms.
Technical issues worsen situation
A look at the issues being raised by passengers on Twitter regarding the problems in filling up the forms reveals that precious little has been done to simplify them. Also, often the passengers face technical issues while filling them.
Though the Air Suvidha portal was launched in August 2020 and was strengthened to accommodate travel guidelines in November 30, 2021, the new rules for international flyers are almost never conveyed formally to them in advance.
Many passengers complain that while they are coming to India, the airline staff keep mum while the queue forms before their counters and only demand the Air Suvidha form when a passenger reaches them for a boarding pass.
The journalist said, “The government should simplify the form and make it convenient to fill it by doing away with the specific pdf sizes. Also the airlines should be made accountable to inform the passengers about the form in advance.”
There are also a lot of complaints about the site not opening or being unable to upload one of the certificates.
Form has 37 queries, requires uploading of 3 documents
The MoCA form requires a passenger to answer 37 queries and upload three documents – a copy of the passport, vaccination certificate and a negative RT-PCR certificate. It also provides links to the MoHFW guidelines for international arrivals, frequently asked questions on the Air Suvidha scheme, and a feedback form along with contact details for any scheme-related queries.
Very often, the process of filling out the form gets stalled when a passenger is uploading the required documents.
Incidentally, passengers are also asking why children under 12 years of age are required to upload vaccination certificates when the scheme has not been started for them yet.
No response from ministers, government
Often, the Union minister of civil aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia and the Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya and even the Prime Minister’s Office are tagged by the passengers in their tweets when raising these queries. But while these ministers or the PMO never respond, it is only the Delhi and Mumbai airport authorities who occasionally reply.
The Wire has sent a questionnaire about the problems being faced by the passengers due to the Suvidha Air form to both Scindia and Mandaviya and the story will be updated with their replies, as and when they are received.
Meanwhile, a passenger, Prasun G., who returned to California last month after a week-long stay in India, said the best way to avoid any harassment is to fill it in advance before travelling to the airport. “I had travelled with my young son to Delhi and it had taken me about half an hour to fill both the forms. I had uploaded these forms to the KLM Airlines site and thereafter faced no problem,” he said.
He said while he had taken a printout of the form, no one asked for it at the Delhi airport. “On the way back to the US too I had to fill up a form, but there was no requirement to take a printout. The process with Air Suvidha should be simplified and passengers should be adequately informed about it when they book their tickets.”
An official of a major travel portal told The Wire that there is no provision as of now for a pop-up to provide information on Air Suvidha form either on their portals or those of the airlines. He said while this would definitely help the passengers, it would require some software changes too.
“But the scheme was started in 2020 and modified late last year and by now it is expected that all passengers would be aware of it. Thereafter revised guidelines were issued earlier this year too and all this is available in the public domain. A mere Google search is enough to reveal the process so there should not be any excuse,” the official said.