Security - A Stitch In Time

When an alert technician discovered pebbles in the fuel tank filler neck of a Bell 412 helicopter that Anil Ambani was to be flown in the next day, the incident (what could have arguably led to an accident) grabbed headlines across the nation. Perhaps the reason for its high visibility was not so much that an aircraft had been endangered but more because of the public figure whose life had been threatened. The episode served to highlight the simple fact that the security on the ground and in the air of the steadily increasing number of civil aircraft in Indian skies, is a matter that needs attention.

Growth in aviation is inexorable in spite of the current recessionary trends. Sadly, corresponding growth in security infrastructure has lagged behind and does not appear likely to catch up in the near future with the pace of growth of aviation activity. The responsibility for laying down the standards of pre-embarkation security and anti-sabotage measures in respect of civil flights at international and domestic airports in India devolves upon the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), which is attached to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and is the regulatory authority for civil aviation security. On the recommendations of the Pande Committee, constituted in the wake of the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1976, the BCAS was initially set up in January 1978 as a Cell under the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Its role at that time was to coordinate, monitor, inspect and train personnel in civil aviation security. Following the Kanishka tragedy in 1987, it was reorganised into an independent department under the MoCA.

Headquartered in Delhi, the BCAS is headed by an officer of the rank of Director General of Police designated as the Commissioner of Security, Civil Aviation. It has four Regional Offices—in Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai—each under a Deputy Commissioner of Security (Civil Aviation) and is responsible for the development, implementation and maintenance of the National Civil Aviation Security Programme. However, the actual security functions at airports since the formation of the Bureau were performed by police personnel of the respective state/Union Territory where the airport was located. This changed after the hijack of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in December 1999, after which it was decided that, in order to bring about uniformity in practices and procedures, as also to ensure effective control and supervision by the MoCA, airport security should be entrusted to a single dedicated force instead of different state police forces with divergent work culture and practices.

The Aviation Security Group
The Committee of Secretaries in its meeting on January 7, 2000, recommended that in the long-term there was a need for a more professional force for civil aviation. It further recommended that the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) be deployed at all airports in India. The dedicated CISF contingent earmarked for aviation security functions at airports in India has been notified as Aviation Security Group (ASG) and now mans most airports in India. However, airports in Jammu and Kashmir, which ironically face the most deadly threat to aviation security from militants, continue to be manned by the state police. The introduction of CISF at airports has led to an overall improvement in almost every area of airport security including perimeter security, access control, terminal building security, apron security, surveillance and passenger handling. However, there remain areas of concern about aviation security that need to be recognised even while remedial actions are being initiated.

First, the CISF is woefully inadequate for the task assigned to it. The ASG serves dual function: aviation security at airports as well as on flights, and hassle-free security for the passengers. However, an early morning flight out of any of the metro cities can hardly be termed pleasant. Having made it in time for the check-in deadline, the passenger faces a serpentine queue to enter the Security Hold Area (SHA) in which one has to offer the hand baggage for screening, pass through a Door Type Metal Detector and be bodily frisked aided by a Hand Held Metal Detector. Neither the X-ray machines nor the CISF personnel carrying out the frisking are adequately numbered for the task in hand, especially so in the early morning flights and quite frequently at other times of the day, too.

The CISF obviously does not see the need to hire adequate personnel and provide sufficient Xray machines to cater for rush hours, being content to meet the average time spent by each passenger to enter the SHA. It is a common sight to see the ever-lengthening queues extending into the checkin areas as passenger traffic rises. The CISF has been stuck with stagnant infrastructure set up even when the traffic was low and manageable. In Jammu and Kashmir, the situation is even worse as there is a baggage X-ray exercise even before entering the airport premises. This is followed by another check inside the terminal building.

SHA Congestion
Security clearance at any airport in India is not a pleasant experience by any stretch of imagination. A part of the pain is perhaps induced by the fact that there does not seem to be adequate standardisation of processes—one of the laudable objectives of the BCAS. For example, at Delhi and Bangalore, one has to remove his laptop out of its container bag and offer it to the X-ray machine in a plastic tray while at most other stations, that is not required and the bag goes through the X-ray machine without the time-wasting exercise of removal and then repacking of laptops by a large number of passengers. This problem is exacerbated in the early morning flights as a large number of early birds are looking forward to a business day at their destinations and are accompanied by their indispensable laptops. Little wonder then that when airlines carry out their On Time Performance analysis, the cause factor SHA congestion occurs with predictable and alarming frequency.

If we were to look at it from the point of view of the CISF, they would like to introduce further stringent measures to ensure higher levels of aviation security. Last year, there was an incident involving exchange of gunfire outside Terminal 2 at Delhi which logically raised the need to have a security check of passengers before their entry into the terminal building. Concourse Plan for security is the name given to a system of checking all baggage and frisking of passengers at the first entry point of the airport; the system is mandated by International Civil Aviation Organisation and India did experiment with it some years ago but had to shelve it due to the large disconnect between passenger volume and airport geography on the one hand, and paucity of infrastructure on the other.

Instead, at Mumbai, for instance, incoming vehicles are subjected to a random check with an occasional frisking and/or manual baggage inspection to keep a semblance of airport entry security. The airports in Jammu and Kashmir are the only ones that continue to follow what could be called the Concourse Plan. As a result, passengers there are required to report at airports much in advance of the scheduled departure as compared to other airports.