Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel are being trained to speak Tamil before getting deployed at the Chennai Airport, S.R. Saravanan, Inspector General, CISF South Sector Headquarters, Chennai, said on Monday.
On the sidelines of a meet to announce CISF Coastal Cyclothon 2026, he said, there exists a separate transfer policy and of the total number of personnel deployed in Chennai, 60 per cent are from south India.
“While 30 per cent of those deployed are Tamil, another 30 per cent will be from Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh. The rest of the 40 per cent come from other parts of the country. We provide coaching in Tamil to those who don’t know and make sure they know the basics,” he said.
R. Ponni, Deputy Inspector General, CISF, Chennai Airport, said all the points at airport where CISF will have to interact with passengers, are manned by personnel who know Tamil.
On whether there’s a manpower shortage of CISF personnel at the airport, Ms. Ponni replied in the negative. Presently, 2,128 personnel are posted at the airport.
Hybrid model security
Mr. Saravanan noted hybrid model of security is the way forward in future. While the core areas will always have CISF personnel, private security personnel will be present in the non-core areas.
Only about 25-30 such private personnel are manning the airport, Ms. Ponni said.
On the issue of GPS spoofing at airports, she said Chennai too had faced such problems last year. A dedicated committee is looking into combating this, she said.
Coastal cyclothon
CISF will organise the second edition of the CISF Vande Mataram Coastal Cyclothon 2026 and Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai will virtually flag off the event on January 28.
The 25-day, 6,553 km cycling expedition, which will cover the entire mainland coastline of the country, will begin at Bakkhali in West Bengal on January 28, reach Chennai on February 13, after touching several areas and end at Kochi on February 22.
