The following article was published today in the Times of India. It is obvious that India wishes to be considered "safe" for the purposes of travel, so its burgeoning economy can continue to grow with massive trade in services and allow its citizens to fly around the world with minimal security concerns. Now...if they could only manage to build a decent airport that is not a dump with a good road leading to it, and announce plane delays on a timely basis rather than two hours after their supposed departure, it would be an even nicer place to do business (oh, yes, and breaking up telephone monopolies and cleaning out air pollution and garbage would be great too!)
Advance flier info system from April
4 Jan 2008, 0015 hrs IST,Vishwa Mohan
NEW DELHI: India will have an advance passenger information service (APIS), on the lines of the system in use in US, which will provide information such as passport and travel details about incoming passengers allowing immigration authorities at six Indian airports to scan the manifests for likely terror threats. The advanced technical system will be operational at Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Cochin airports from April 1. After running a pilot project for Air India, all international airlines will now have to provide information about passengers and crew within 15 minutes of taking off on flights bound for India. At present, besides the US, APIS is operational in nine countries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bahrain, South Korea, China, Mexico, South Africa and Japan. APIS was installed in the US after 9/11 and there have been occasions when aircrafts have been diverted after American authorities objected to the presence of certain persons on a flight. But the advance information has allowed immigration officers to run checks on databases and also look for indicators like countries visited and nationality. The system has been criticised as a form of profiling where mere nationality or ethnicity can be a reason for questioning, but security agencies feel that it gives them valuable lead time. It is also felt that immigration clearance could become easier for those who don't fall in suspect categories. Union home ministry has decided to go ahead with APIS and pilots of international flights will pass on travellers' names, date of birth, nationality, sex, passport number, country issuing the passport, country of permanent residence and visa number as well as date and place of issue to immigration authorities at destination airports. "The decision to operationalise APIS at six airports from April 1 was taken recently in a high-level meeting held by home secretary Madhukar Gupta. Civil aviation and tourism officials also took part where they discussed modalities to make it operational at remaining airports by the end of this year," said a senior home ministry official. Though the passenger information would first be passed on to the immigration authorities for faster immigration clearance at airports, the data will also be shared with security agencies to check presence of any "suspicious element" on board from their records. This system is currently being tested at Delhi's international airport.
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