CISF to take over as ‘integrated unified command’ for overall airport security

The security standards will be monitored and managed by the CISF even at those airports for which state police or state agencies are providing security

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Jayant Sinha (Express photo by Renuka Puri)

The Home ministry has accepted plans to make Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) the “integrated unified command” for taking care of security of airports across India, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said on Thursday. This means that security standards will be monitored and managed by the CISF even at those airports for which state police or state agencies are providing security.

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“…We are moving towards an (integrated) unified command for the CISF across the entire aviation system, which is a very major change that we have recommended and which the Ministry of Home Affairs has accepted,” Sinha said at a press briefing.

“They (CISF) will therefore be able to ensure that we have consistent and sufficiently high security standards across all of the airports, and that is independent of which particular security agency is actually providing people there, but it will be under the overall command of CISF,” he said.

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Aviation Security Group of the CISF currently takes care of security of 59 out of total 98 operational airports across the country. State police and their agencies take care of security at other the airports which are not manned by the CISF personnel. The government is working on details on this plan, which will be unveiled very soon, he said.

On June 10, 2015, after a violent incident involving employees of the AAI and the CISF at Karipur International Airport in Kozhikode, Kerala, the government held a series of discussions on better coordination among the security agencies. While the earlier proposal of having a dedicated Civil Aviation Security Force was struck down, the government has now decided to make the CISF the unified command for security all airports across the country.

The incident at the Karipur Airport on June 10, 2015 involved a fight between Fire Service Officials of the AAI and the CISF personnel in which one CISF official was killed. There was widespread damage of airport property, the runway was blocked for some time and the airport was closed for six hours. This raised question marks over the effectiveness of the existing coordination mechanism between various agencies involved in providing security at airports.

Sinha said the funding of CISF will also be done in a centralised manner after the new plan kicks in. “This basically means that security standards will be monitored and managed by CISF in terms of deployment staff, deployment of equipment, protocols, in terms of various emergency and response mechanisms, so all of that will be monitored and managed by the CISF, and funded in centralised way as opposed to being funded in an airport by airport way,” he said.