Tirupati: The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) is all set to become the first  facial recognition technology (FRT) for pilgrim-related activities, making it the first religious organisation in the nation to do so.

From March 1, the technology will be made available at all associated Accommodation Management Services (AMS) systems at Tirumala and the second Vaikuntam Queue Complex, where regular visitors enter the Lord Venkateswara shrine.

The FRT will assist in preventing impersonation in addition to improving transparency in the token-less darshan system and the allocation of cottages and guest homes. The system will prevent unauthorised efforts to get additional Sarva Darshan tokens as well as guarantee that the pilgrims' caution payments are returned.

According to a temple official, TTD will begin testing facial recognition technology at Vaikuntam 2 and AMS systems on March 1. Each and every pilgrim would be photographed at the entry point while enrolling for darshan as part of this new initiative, according to D. Narasimha Kishore, chief vigilance and security officer (CVSO), TTD, in order to be matched with the data bank and prevent impersonation and service misuse. After the first visit, each future visit will make it simple to recognise that specific pilgrim.

"Facial recognition technology will be used to cross-check the pilgrim when he enters the temple a second time. He will be permitted if the same ticket matches the image of him taken when he faces the camera and is submitted to the data (bank) for comparison. Otherwise, it will be accused of impersonating, Mr. Kishore said.

Tracing a lost person's track within the temple grounds, assuring the delivery of laddus (consecrated sweets distributed as prasadam), putting an end to impersonation, quickly verifying worshippers, and others are additional benefits.
"We'll check a devotee very quickly. We used to manually collect personal information, enter it, and checkIn the past, we used to manually collect personal information, enter it, and check it against Aadhaar cardstarted, that much is certain. If it is completely successful, this will be a significant accomplishment, according to the top Indian Police Service (IPS) officer.

If this technology is successfully implemented, a visitor who enters Tirumala is immediately within the digital perimeter of the temple administration. All 3,000 cameras are able to capture the followers.

"You can check the individual at the entry point once his (the devotee's) face is recognised at the time of enrollment. following his visit to the darshan. There will be one prasadam token provided. He can be examined there. He then proceeds to the prasadam, where we can also perform a cross-check, the man observed.

The top police officer claims that fingerprint and iris biometric identification is 100% error-proof because facial recognition can only be 60% accurate at times. TTD's top security officer believes that after evaluating the effectiveness, it can also be incorporated into the surveillance camera command control system of one of the wealthiest Hindu temples, which receives close to 1 lakh visitors each day.

Sandeep from TTD's IT department reassured that, given its safe location in the organization's local data centre, the data gathered and mapped for facial recognition is impervious to outside intervention.

Information is solely kept in our data centre. It is not kept off-site at TTD. It is an intranet application, which is the second factor. He claimed that it is not an online application.

A disaster recovery facility is also added to TTD's data centre, and it is situated at the Tirumala Arjitham office. He asserted that the general public and outside parties cannot access this data.