Air tickets may soon attract ‘security fee’

NEW DELHI:With the Centre deciding to hand over security arrangements at all airports to the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), a joint committee has been constituted with senior officials drawn from the ministries of Home, Finance and Civil Aviation to work out a detailed plan, including financial implications attached to it and also ways to fund it.

Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 20

With the Centre deciding to hand over security arrangements at all airports to the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), a joint committee has been constituted with senior officials drawn from the ministries of Home, Finance and Civil Aviation to work out a detailed plan, including financial implications attached to it and also ways to fund it.

Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said the committee might suggest increasing the passenger service fee (PSF), which is levied on air travellers. For long, the issue has been lingering as to who should bear the cost of providing security at airports, with the Ministry of Civil Aviation arguing that it should be borne out of the Consolidated Fund of India for the reason that providing security is the sovereign duty of the state.

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The idea of increasing PSF was first mooted at a recent meeting of Ministers of State for Home, Finance and Civil Aviation Kiren Rijiju, Arjun Ram Meghwal and Jayant Sinha, respectively, and for the purpose they constituted a “committee of senior officials”, sources said.

Already the MHA owes a cumulative Rs 800 crore to the Civil Aviation Ministry for providing security at 59 of the total 98 existing small and big airports in the country.

“Now, in-principle, it has been decided to hand over all current and future functional airports to CISF,” said the official, adding that the committee would help the Civil Aviation Ministry in finding out how much revenue it could generate from the PSF, car parking facilities and through rentals at the airports. Currently, around Rs 150 is levied as PSF on each traveller.

The committee will also work out modalities for creating a unified security architecture for the aviation sector and consolidation of security at airports under the CISF cover. Of the 98 functional airports, 59 are under CISF cover. Among them, 26 airports, including those in New Delhi and Mumbai, are considered to be hyper-sensitive.

Of these hyper-sensitive airports, six, like in Srinagar and Imphal, are being guarded by the CRPF, the state police or other paramilitary forces. Under the sensitive category, there are 56 airports of which only 37 had CISF cover.