Bengaluru among 15 airports that have no bomb squads

Bengaluru is among 15 hyper-sensitive international airports that do not have a CISF Bomb Disposal Squad, according to a Parliamentary Standing Committee report placed in Parliament on Wednesday.

Only seven out of 22 hyper-sensitive airports -- Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Kochi and Amritsar -- have such a facility.

This was conveyed to Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs led by Congress MP Anand Sharma by the Ministry of Home Affairs and find a mention in the Action Taken Report on working conditions in CISF, CRPF and National Security Guard.

The MHA told the panel that it had asked the Chief Security Officers of eight airports -- Bengaluru, Agartala, Imphal, Pune, Raipur, Goa, Varanasi and Jaipur -- to operationalise the squad by May this year but did not mention whether the deadline has been met.

The report said a Committee of Secretaries had in April 2011 had instructed that the Ministry of Civil Aviation to provide Rs 300 crore to on loan basis to airport operators in 18 airports to procure 28 gadgets for each facility.

The MHA told the panel Bengaluru airport has procured 26 out of 28 gadgets mentioned by the security establishment. None of the 22 hyper-sensitive airports have all the equipment.

However, hyper-sensitive airports of Lucknow and Jodhpur do not have 27 out of 28 equipment. Delhi lacks 3 out of 28 equipment while Mumbai doesn't have two equipment.

In its recommendation, the panel said five airports -- Bagdogra, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Ahmedabad -- do not have some of the crucial equipment. Some of those available were either not working or under repair for long.

It also expressed concern that the Aviation Security Group is not functional due to non-availability of essential equipment and the CISF faces "acute problem in performing anti-sabotage and bomb detection duties at these airports.