By IANS,
New Delhi : The government Tuesday agreed to deploy additional personnel to man the security and immigration counters at the Delhi airport.
Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar agreed to the demand put up by the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) – the airport developer of the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport – here for additional personnel and for increasing the immigration counters from 56 to 100.
The DIAL had sought for 1,400 additional Central Industrial Security Force personnel besides 150 more immigration officers during its meeting with the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on May 12.
The decision was taken at a review meeting on the progress of the modernisation of the IGI airport.
Ahluwalia had met DIAL officials after complaints of chaos and disorder at the airport.
But Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel did not appreciate the meeting and wrote to Ahluwalia on May 13, blaming the Planning Commission for delay in modernisation of the Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai airports.
The matter finally reached the Cabinet Secretary, K.M. Chandrasekhar. He asked the DIAL to give a fortnightly progress report on the modernisation of Delhi airport.
On its part, the DIAL says that the airport is already handling twice the planned capacity of 12 million passengers annually.