MPs not happy with airport security

Tuesday’s terror strike on the Brussels airport has now brought the focus on security at Indian airports.

The MPs had listed “several gaps and lack of unified command and control over multiple agencies” involved in securing airports in a report of Parliamentary Standing Committee, chaired by Trinamool Congress MP K D Singh, which was tabled in Parliament in December.

The gaps include “weak” perimeter security, watchtowers at a distance of 1 km when the ideal setting is 300 metres, no increase in number of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel at airports despite rise in flights and deficiency of security gadgets like X-Ray Baggage Inspection System (X-BIS).

The committee called for a comprehensive aviation security policy before a “major untoward incident” takes place. Quoting threat inputs, they suggested that attacks could come through surgically-implanted explosives, IEDs hidden in printer ink and toner cartridges, hijacking using trained pilots and forcible intrusion at smaller airports.

The panel was aghast to note that eight out of 26 hypersensitive, 19 of 56 sensitive and 12 out of 16 normal airports were not under CISF’s “specialised cover”.“Now the question is who is then guarding these airports and how secure these airports are? In these existing threat perceptions at our airports, the country can ill-afford such a situation to continue any more,” the panel said in its report “Issues Related to Security at Airports in India.”