CISF security cover extended to eight more airports, including Srinagar

New Delhi: The central government has decided to extend the security cover provided by the Central Industry Security Force (CISF) to eight more airports around the country, including extremely sensitive ones at Srinagar and Leh. According to the force's acting director general, SIS Ahmed, this will further extend CISF's responsibilities beyond the 54 airports that it already guards.

The CISF's security cover includes the newly privatised ones at Delhi and Mumbai, as well as the green-field ones coming up at Hyderabad and Bangalore. Security for airports is over and above the cover that it provides to other sensitive government installations.

The new airports, other than Srinagar and Leh, that will now come under the CISF security cover are Gorakhpur, Bhavnagar, Dehradun, Jamnagar, Porbandar and Shillong.
However, Ahmed clarified that the Srinagar airport would still remain under control of a joint command of various central security forces.

Addressing a press conference here ahead of its 38th Raising Day, the CISF director general said that the security infrastructure at airports needed to be improved in view of the threat from terror outfits. Airports in the country went on high alert as many as 42 times last year in the wake of intelligence inputs that warned of terrorist strikes. Ahmed also revealed that plans for a security upgrade would lay stress on biometric and explosive detection systems.

Ahmed also said that the CISF had already decided to set up a special Aviation Training Institute in Hyderabad to train personnel in handling security duties at airports.

Besides airports, CISF provides security cover to 13 seaports, sensitive nuclear and space installations, steel plants, coal-fields, oil refineries, and mints. The one-lakh strong force came into existence in 1969.