Reading Article
Shamshabad to get modern immigration check points
In the wake of a revised security set up in the state, the Union ministry of home affairs has approved the setting up of an exclusive state of the art immigration department at the Shamshabad Inter national Airport.
Sources said that the advanced computerised immigration department would reduce time taken to verify bonafides of apassenger and also help officials of the newly announced elite anti terrorism force Octpus to share first hand information on suspect passengers.
Apart from routine duty, a special team would be working round the clock at the immigration department to share information with various wings in the union home ministry. Through all immigration departments at airports across the country are supposed to be under the Intelligence Bureau, lack of adequate personnel has been forcing them to take the assistance of the respective assistance of the respecially the special Branch. Sources said that IB would in all probability take over the immigration desk at Shamshabad International Airport once it becomes operational in March 2008 due to the changed security outlook for the city.
At present, special branch personnel under the command of the Hyderabad city police commissionerate are deployed at immigration check points at the Begumpet airport. These officials would be soon be working under the Cyberabad police commissionerate after the new airport gets operational and continue giving inputs to the state intelligence department.
Special branch officials manning immigration counters are designated to check details of Indian and foreign nationals whose names in figure in the look out circular, provided by the Bureau of immigration. The LOC contains name, passport number, sex, nationality, date of birth and the necessary action to be taken. Besides, it also cantains the list of those who have lost their passports. Immigration officials would also have access to sophisticated machine readers as against the available manual supplementary items like ultraviolet lamps to check forged passports and travels documents.These machine readers can detect tampering, which is not visible to the human eye. The state home department has already given its nod for setting up 45 immigration counters at the international airport for clearing nearly 20,000 immigrations perday, beginning March 2008.