Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Lackadaisical authorities continue to keep Mumbai airport in danger zone

The Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) was put under on high alert on Monday following a call received at the airport's control room, claiming that the airport terminals and Taj hotel would be attacked.
Earlier this month, two Vasai residents had entered the high-security Terminal 2 of CSIA using fake Vistara flight tickets. They were caught by security officials while exiting the departure gate without catching a plane. Even as the incident had sent security agencies into a tizzy, owing to the seriousness of the breach, further investigations had revealed that duo had done so in order to see off a relative.
Experts say the two could have been prevented from entering the terminal with a bit of more human interaction by security officials posted inside and outside the airport.
Dozens of major and minor instances of security breaches have been reported across airports in India. Minister of civil aviation (state) Mahesh Sharma had last month accepted that such instances happen, while saying "only" 15 cases of security breach have been reported since 2012 by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the aviation safety regulator.
Sharma had said that of the total lapses, 10 were reported in 2012 itself from various domestic airports, with the most — five — from CSIA. The other airports that had reported such cases were Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Guwahati, Amritsar and Hyderabad.
30/09/15 Shahkar Abidi/Daily News & Analysis
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