Delhi Metro: CISF cuts security waiting time by half

New Delhi: In order to facilitate easy movement of Delhi Metro commuters, CISF has cut down frisking and scanning time by almost half, keeping the upper time-limit to clear long queue at five minutes at most-crowded stations.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is mandated to secure the Delhi Metro network in the national capital region, has trained its men in smart and quick profiling and frisking techniques of passengers.

As a result, it claimed, while at busy stations like Chandni Chowk, Hooda City Centre and Badarpur the jawans take a maximum of five minutes to clear the queue, they only take three minutes to clear the incoming passengers at other stations which are not so busy.

This is a drastic cut in waiting time at Metro stations as compared to the eight-minute time that the CISF personnel used to clear the long lines at busy stations.

"We are now at a stage where we have cut the waiting time at busy Metro stations almost by half. The force is being able to achieve this time limit except in certain situations when there are some genuine reasons for the troops to indulge in deep frisking and scanning of passenger goods," chief of CISF security at Delhi Metro, SDD Singh, told a news agency here.

He said at places like Chandni Chowk, where there are long queues to get in the Metro, CISF troops are taking about five minutes to clear a big lot of commuters while at other stations including the heavy footfall receiving stations like Rajiv Chowk and Kashmere Gate, his personnel are taking just about three minutes.

The CISF Deputy Inspector General (Metro Security) added that the force has been able to achieve this capability after months of training of its men and women and installation of additional security gadgets like X-ray baggage scanners and hand-held metal detectors at a number of stations.

"The CISF security men have been trained in rigorous passenger profiling and they are quite adept at that. We also have made security arrangements where an incoming passenger's movement are watched by other personnel, may or may not be in uniform, who stands in aid to the person who is actually frisking the commuter," he said.

Singh said the force, in view of the swine flu outbreak, has also distributed about 200 medical masks to its personnel who are in direct interface with passengers while frisking.

"We have given the masks to our personnel at busy stations. Also, at some stations which are close to hospitals like AIIMS and RML and there is a movement of patients these masks have been distributed," he said.

The CISF has been trying to put in place these new mechanisms to ease the waiting time at Metro stations for quite sometime now, with none other than force chief Arvind Ranjan initiating these new procedures in the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) services.

DMRC runs close to 12,000 Metro coaches on 147 stations covering 193-km in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad, the CISF has deployed close to 4,500 men and women to secure these premises and frisk passengers and their belongings. About 26 lakh people take the Delhi Metro every day.