From April 1 onwards, passengers in seven airports across India can move into their flights without getting their cabin bag tags stamped “security checked”. These seven airports are Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Cochin. This rule will be implemented at both domestic and international airports and the decision has been taken by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).
As reported by Times of India (TOI), CISF chief O P Singh said,”At Delhi airport, we have got HD cameras installed at Terminal 1 and 3. The are where the passengers queue up for the security check is under the surveillance of 36 such cameras and the are where passengers are sent after the frisking has got 44 cameras.”
Similarly, there are 85 such HD cameras installed at the Mumbai airport, as said by CISF chief.
“An interrupted power backup support at all these seven airports has been requested. Several revolving cameras have also been fixed in some airports to minimise grey areas,” the DG said.
Certain changes have also been made for the conveyor belts with structures made of steel through which the hand bags will roll first and enter into the x-ray machines and then come out on the output roller. While acrylic barriers have also been installed so that the doubtful bags could be detected.
Now once all these measures were taken in all the seven airports, the CISF decide to wave off stamping of handbag tags from April 1. For rest of the airports across the nation, the CISF needs to figure out how this rule of not stamping the bags could be implemented.
The TOI also quoted Singh saying,”In the rest of the airports, we need to do some trial to implement this no stamping rule.”
Stamping of handbags was used after they were screened and to make sure that anything which could be a threat to flight safety could be detected, But now, the HD camera installation will ensure the same sort of security check but without a stamp.
Advance countries including US and EU nations don’t follow stamping of handbags while India is among the few nations which follow this practice.
