More staff at Delhi airport immigration cells, space for checks

NEW DELHI: More manpower will be deployed to man all immigration counters at Delhi airport even as DIAL, a consortium that manages IGI airport, has been asked by the home ministry to rework the airport layout to create more space for the security check area, enabling passenger spillovers to be handled by additional security- check lines, reports Bharti Jain. The decisions - to be rolled out immediately - were taken at a meeting led by home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla on Thursday.
Home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla meet focuses on cutting wait time at immigration counters
Home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla on Thursday conducted a meeting to review the situation arising out of the current passenger rush and delays at Indira Gandhi International Airport.
The meeting - attended by senior officials of Bureau of Immigration, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, CISF and DIAL - was particularly focused on reducing the wait-time at immigration counters for incoming and outgoing passengers, travelling on international routes.
During the meeting, it was highlighted that while there are enough immigration counters at the Delhi airport, not all were manned at a given point of time, due to limited availability of immigration staff. The home secretary is said to have sought deployment of more personnel to ensure that all immigration counters are simultaneously active to handle the passenger rush caused by the ongoing holiday season and post-Covid economic recovery that has extended to sectors like aviation and tourism.
At the meeting on Thursday, DIAL was asked by the home secretary to expand the security check area within the airport and have the required security infrastructure in place to handle the passenger congestion. Civil aviation ministry has already taken up this matter with DIAL, TOI has learnt.
"While commercial space allotted by DIAL to shops and eateries within the airport terminals brings in attractive earnings, the fact remains that security check is the more important function to be discharged at airports. The world over, the security check areas are created to handle higher than usual passenger traffic. Focus should be to create a security infrastructure that can take in additional security lines to accommodate growing passenger traffic and reduce the average screening time...this may require tweaking of the commercial space within the airport, but then giving relief and a pleasant airport experience to the passenger has to be the top priority of airport authorities," a senior government officer told TOI.
As the airport security infrastructure is expanded, CISF will deploy additional personnel to man the extra security lines enabled in the process.