The Home Ministry has put on hold the Civil Aviation Ministry’s decision to do away with the security stamping of the passengers’ hand baggage at seven airports.
An official said the proposal has been temporarily shelved due to lack of security gadgets.
The decision, to stay the order of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), was taken during a high-level meeting chaired by Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju and Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha on Thursday.
“Deliberations had been on for dispensing with the stamping of baggage tags at airports for a long time. Recently the CISF had conducted trial runs in two phases at 12 airports and concluded that stamping of baggage tags could be dispensed with after certain modifications of security architecture at the Security Hold Areas of the airports and installation of High Definition CCTV Cameras. These modifications were required to make sure that passengers could not access bags containing restricted items which are segregated by CISF personnel for checking. High Definition CCTV cameras focussed on the baggage screening system were required so that CISF personnel who security cleared a bag could be easily identified for the purpose of fixing accountability,” a CISF statement said.
The seven airports are Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Kochi, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
The BCAS had issued a circular on February 23 to dispense with the mandatory practice of putting security stamp on the hand baggage tags with “immediate effect”, despite an objection by the CISF.
