Need to double airport strength in 5 years: CISF

NEW DELHI: Adding more peak hour flights at India's biggest airports without augmenting the security manpower and infrastructure is proving to be a pain for both passengers — who have to wait in long queues — and for personnel — who are under 'undue' pressure to speed up frisking.

Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the agency in charge of airport security, has stated this categorically in a report to the government. It has projected that the paramilitary force will need to almost double its airport deployment in the next five years given the explosive growth of air travel in India.

And failing to do so in time could lead to "chaos" and make our big airports "unmanageable", its report submitted to the home and aviation ministries recently and accessed by TOI says.

CISF currently has about 26,000 security personnel deployed at 59 of the 98 functional airports in India.

The report titled "Future Projection September 2017" says CISF will need 19,072 additional manpower in next five years. The extra requirement will be for reasons like new terminals at existing airports; new airports getting operational under regional connectivity scheme and augmenting city side security at all airports. The cost of this force expansion will be finalised shortly.

"India has witnessed a healthy passenger traffic growth of about 66.2% (10.5 crore) in the last five years. Passenger traffic is expected to touch the 40 crore mark in the next five years from the current 26.5 crore (counting both arriving and departing flyers). Hence planning for expansion of critical aviation infrastructure over the next 25-30 years is absolutely vital," the CISF report says.