Hand baggage tag-free regime at all airports soon: CISF DG O P Singh

The CISF is trying to do away with the practice of stamping hand baggage tags of fliers at all airports soon in order to make air travel more comfortable, the chief of the paramilitary force said on Friday. 

Delivering his address on the occasion of the 48^th Raising Day of the force in Ghaziabad, CISF Director General O P Singh said the force has already conducted a trial in this regard and it has been successful.

“We are trying to do away with the stamping of hand baggage tag of passengers soon at all airports that we secure.  The force wants air travel to be more comfortable for the fliers,” the chief of the 1.45-lakh personnel strong force said.

A high-level meeting was recently chaired by Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju and his counterpart in the Civil Aviation ministry Jayant Sinha in order to effectively operationalise the new system at the airports, beginning with a cluster of seven selected airports.

It is expected that the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) will implement it at the selected airports of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Cochin, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, from next month.

A committee, constituted post the high-level meeting, comprising senior officials from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, CISF and airport operators has already begun a tour of the airports to plug the “grey” areas at these sensitive facilities so that the possibility of any security breach can be ruled out once the procedure of stamping of tag is done away with.

The CISF wants to have High Definition (HD) multi-angle CCTV cameras in security hold areas, standby cameras with power backup facility, video analytics in CCTV and physical barriers by way of deploying acrylic sheets at X-ray baggage clearing levels so that the personnel who clear a baggage at the airports could be “easily identified for the purpose of fixing accountability” and also ensure fool-proof checking of bags.

The force was raised in 1969 and has recently got sanctions to recruit 35,000 more personnel to take its manpower from the existing about 1.45-lakh to 1.80-lakh in the next few years time.