IIT Kanpur develops technology for the issuance of e-passports

The Indian Institute of Kanpur, in association with the National Informatics Centre, had developed a new infrastructure in a bid to support the government's ambitious e-passport service. As per reports, the new system will employ the technology used by plastic smart cards for the issuance of said e-passports. Notably, this procedure uses a software named Scosta-CL, which has also been developed by IIT Kanpur.

IIT Kanpur's Scosta to help generate e-passports

Scosta-CL technique will now be used to generate e-passports in the country. This novel technique was developed by IIT Bhilai Director Prof Rajat Moona when he was a professor at IIT Kanpur. The software apes a credit-card size chip in a plastic smart card to store information.

Reportedly, about 4 KB to 150 KB data can be stored on this chip, which can be accessed in the operating system through an access control protocol. The chip also carries an 8-32 bit cryptographic processor to store multiple files at one time. At present, smart cards are being used in health, banking, ticketing system and so on.

IIT Kanpur Director Prof Abhay Karindikar said that now the same technology will be used to generate e-passports. Since Scosta uses a cryptographic processor, it is completely authentic and tamperproof and can be deployed to store personal information and issue digital passports.

What is the Scosta Technology?

Scosta- Smart Card Operating System for Transport Application was developed at IIT Kanpur in the year 2002 for transport application. This technology was used as Sampark Smart Card in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. It is also used actively to generate license and registration cards, identity cards, PDS (ration) cards, RSBY (health) cards, read reports. The technology is ISO approved and also complies with all international requirements.