NEW DELHI: The Union government has sanctioned a 1,700-strong armed security contingent of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) for the newly-built Noida International Greenfield Airport, expected to be operational from April next year.
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently approved the aviation security deployment plan and the survey conducted by the security agencies for the Greenfield airport, sources said.
The CISF is the designated national civil aviation security force and it has an aviation security group under its establishment that currently guards 68 airports across the country with a strength of about 38,000 personnel.
The force secures civil airports from potential terror and sabotage threats through its armed commandos, friskers and intelligence wing officials.
The Noida airport unit will have about 1,700 men and women personnel, headed by a deputy inspector general-rank officer. This security deployment is meant for the first phase of the airport’s operationalisation, the sources said.
The airport was initially expected to launch operations in September, but the deadline has now been pushed to April 2025 following construction delays. It is coming up in Jewar area of Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar district, 75 kilometres southeast of Delhi.
The mega public-private partnership project of the UP government is billed to be India’s largest airport upon completion. The airport is to be developed in an area of more than 5,000 hectares in four phases.
In the first phase, the airport will have one runway along with a terminal building with capacity of 1.2 crore passengers annually, officials said.
The CISF, a Central Armed Police Force under the home ministry, was entrusted with the task of securing civil airports in the aftermath of the 1999 hijack of the Indian Airlines’ Kathmandu-Delhi flight IC-814 to Kandahar in Afghanistan.The first airport it took charge of was Jaipur in February 2000.