The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) and the State Government should together decide on the places where the spot booking facility has to be opened for Sabarimala pilgrims, the Kerala High Court has directed.
A Division Bench, consisting of Justice Anil K. Narendran and Justice P.G. Ajithkumar, issued the order while considering a writ petition for handing over the queue system from the police to the board. The court asked the authorities concerned to strictly guard the privacy of the data collected. Details of the vacant slots in the virtual queue should be published, the Bench directed.
The State Government informed the court that the spot bookings should begin from November 16. Aadhaar cards, passports and electoral ID cards can be used for booking. The board submitted that those who have taken the two shots of COVID-19 vaccine need not go for the RT-PCR tests for the pilgrimage. Facilities for conducting the tests had already been arranged at Nilackal and more facilities would be arranged, the Board submitted
S. Sreejith, the Additional Director General of Police (Crime Branch), who is also the Chief Police Coordinator at the hill shrine, said the privacy of the data collected by the police for the virtual queue system was protected.
All the ID proof details uploaded in the system since 2019 are encrypted to ensure the data privacy. The ID proof details are not accessible and visible to anyone in plain text mode. The police personnel at the verification counters can see only the masked ID numbers during verification.
All verifications are done on masking logic, where only the last four digits of the ID cards are visible to the operator. Moreover, the ID card number search from the front end at the time of verification was also disabled, he submitted.
The police proposed to open spot booking counters at Nilaakal, Erumely and Kumily for devotees without mobile phones. During the 2021-22 season, 18,30,000 virtual queue coupons were released, 13,34,347 coupons booked and 2,06,246 coupons cancelled by the pilgrims, he submitted.
