21 September 2000

Civil Aviation Minister puts airports' security in jeopardy

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: The Indian airports' security may be in jeopardy as an infuriated Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav has put on hold a Union Cabinet's decision, taken after the last December hijack of an Indian Airlines aircraft, to put all civilian airports under the charge of a specially trained force.

Yadav reportedly saw a great opportunity in the Cabinet decision to provide jobs to thousands of youths who can remain committed to him. His plans, however, did not materialise since the Aviation Security Force (ASF) created for beefing up the airports' security was entirely drawn from the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).

The Minister's attempt to influence the CISF to recruit his candidates in the ASF failed as the CISF insisted that they would not like to earn bad name by engaging inexperienced hands to handle such an important responsibility. They offered to provide employment to say 10-15 candidates of the ministers but not the whole lot he wanted to get in.

An angry Yadav has ordered on a file marked to the Civil Aviation Secretary that the security of 20 airports already taken over by the ASF be reverted back to the concerned state governments and a note be put up for the Cabinet to wind up the new force.

The ASF personnel are drawn from the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which has earned the reputation of protecting the central establishments all over the country without a single major security breakdown. The CISF's unblemished record had weighed in the Cabinet decision to ask it to protect airports.

Inquiries showed that Yadav was himself enthusiastic about a special force handling the airports' security when the Cabinet decided to pass on the security responsibility of all 63 civilian airports to the CISF in a phased manner. The CISF was asked to create a separate force within its overall command so as to provide the special kind of training the personnel would need for handling the passengers.

Yadav wanted the new force to be under the overall superintendence of the Civil Aviation Ministry on the ground that the Airports Authority of India which managed all civilian airports was also under the Ministry. The proposal was opposed by the then Civil Aviation Secretary Ravindra Gupta, who was having a running battle with the minister.

Gupta is believed to have recorded on file that Yadav wants to accommodate his own Janata Dal men into the new force which may render it not that effective as the Cabinet wanted. It is now learnt that Yadav subsequently tried to put pressure on the CISF chief that the a 25,000-strong ASF should be raised through fresh recruitment instead of transferring the CISF staff.

The CISF's refusal to buckle down under the Minister's pressure and repeated pointer that it will not compromise the airports' security by raising a new force instead of taking the experienced hands infuriated Yadav to rule that the airports do not need ASF at all and it be better wound up. END