Hijacking chances remain high — Crisis panel

Consider the number of “authorised” weapons smuggled into flights by the officials of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS). This means that to test security efficacy an official is authorised to smuggle in weapons in to flights. Figures exclusively made available to The Indian Express reveal that in 1999 there were 2,938 cases were weapons were carried undetected in to flights. This is similar to 1995 when there were 2,015 cases. This went up to 4,583 cases in 1996 and 4,949 cases in 1997. In 1998 4,050 cases of weapons went in unchecked. The figures for this year are still being compiled but sources say that they have already crossed the 1,500-mark.

The Government also introduced a double-point X-ray system at the airports. According to plan, a passengers is required to identify his baggage twice. After a passenger identifies his baggage before it goes through the X-ray machine, he is asked to identify the baggage again. Only then the baggage is put into aircraft’s cargo section.

Even the other hyped measure of putting in sky marshalls in to random flights has degenerated into a inter-ministerial fight with IA being forced to fork out Rs 18 crore a year for the commandoes — handpicked from various security agencies — and specially trained. There was a lot of initial resistance but IA and the Civil Aviation Ministry were forced to cave in after the Ministry of Home Affairs got the Cabinet Committee on Security Affairs to issue a directive and sky marshalls were deployed from May this year.

But what is surprising is that though the Government-owned airlines are placing sky marshalls on the sensitive routes — domestic as well as international — private airlines operating on those routes don’t have sky marshalls. “How do you know that they won’t choose a private airline the next time? The Government is under the impression that hijackers will target only the Government-owned airlines,” says another a senior IA official.

“We do not have any fixed plan on their deployment. On some flights they are put randomly while on some others they are placed according to the threat perception,” says Commissioner of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), Veerana Aivalli. But according to sources in the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MOCA), all IA flights to Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East have sky marshalls.

National Security Guard (NSG) commandoes are deployed four to a flight and in the case of flights travelling abroad, are given daily allowances of up to a US$100. This, despite security officials saying that the only way to check a hijack is by making sure that the weapons do not get on board the flight. In practice, ladder-point security checks are conducted only on IA flights to Kathmandu. Says a senior official: “The use of Kathmandu airport could have been a one off but we seem to believe that ladder-point security should be confined to Kathmandu airport.”

Security checks after Kandahar have become such a sore point with politicians that the Aviation Ministry recently stopped the deployment of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) — another post-Kandahar measure — after protests from MPs on the Aviation Ministry’s Consultative Committee. The MPs insisted they should be immune from security checks. Says a BCAS official: “We spent crores of rupees putting the CISF in to place and now Sharad Yadav has caved in and stopped deployment.”

In fact, Civil Aviation Secretar A.H. Jung’s letter to the CISF cited the “mishandling of Jayanti Mahanta”, Rajya Sabha MP and wife of Assam Chief Minister, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta as one of the reasons of the withdrawal of the CISF. As it is, deployemnt of CISF was turning out to be “expensive”, and only 19 airports out of 66 operational ones had been handed over to the CISF.

Aivalli, however, points out that “passengers often complain about excess security checks but not lack of it. One must realise that the Kandahar hijack took place in Nepal and not here”.

— With inputs by Sandeep Phukan

The holes
* Over 1,500 weapons got onto flights undetected this year
* Ladder-point friskng is carried out only on flights to Kathmandu
* CISF deployment in airports withdrawn after MPs complaining and insisting they be allowed on board without ladder-point frisking
* Sky marshalls — costing IA Rs 1.5 crore per month — are not deployed on all flights
* No increased security for private airlines