No handbag tags at 6 more airports from June 1

Six more airports in the country, including Patna and Chennai, will do away with the practice of tagging and stamping domestic passengers' hand baggage from June 1.

CISF Director General O P Singh said that the new airports include Jaipur, Guwahati, Lucknow and Trivandrum, apart from Patna and Chennai.

"We had run a trial at these six airports for a few weeks. After finding that an enhanced number of new gadgets, CCTVs and security paraphernalia has been put in place, the process of doing away with the tagging and stamping of domestic air passengers' hand baggage will begin from June 1," the DG said.

The Central Industrial Security Force had first initiated this new system at seven airports of Delhi, Mumbai, Cochin, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad from April 1.

The force is tasked with guarding 59 civil airports in the country.

Singh said five more airports at Varanasi, Pune, Goa, Bhubaneswar and Vishakhapatnam would be next in line where the tagging and stamping of passengers' hand baggage will be done away with in the coming days.

"The trial will now begin at these five airports," he said, adding the force proposes to initiate this people- friendly measure at all the airports under its cover, by the year-end.