Power Banks, Lighters Most Seized Prohibited Items Found During Security Check At Airports In India

At the Aviation Security Culture Week-2023 held at BCAS Headquarters in Delhi, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) said that every day, around 25,000 prohibited items are seized by security agencies from air passengers at various airports across the country. Among these, power banks are the most seized item found in check-in baggage. BCAS said that the seized prohibited items that were often found in check-in baggage are power banks (44 per cent), lighter (19 per cent), loose batteries (18 per cent), and laptops (11 per cent). In hand-baggage, lighter (26 per cent), scissors (22 per cent), knife (16 per cent), and liquids (14 per cent) are found.

Other items include cigarette lighters to scissors, knives and loose batteries. Around 25,000 prohibited items are taken out from the baggage of air passengers at airports in a day and handling each of these items takes around three minutes, according to aviation security agency BCAS. BCAS chief Zulfiquar Hasan stressed that time diverted for such prohibited items in the hand and check-in baggage can be otherwise utilised by the agency to deal with other graver threats.

"Every day, we screen around eight lakhs handbags and five lakhs check-in baggage at all airports in the country. And while checking, we find around 25,000 prohibited items that create a diversion for security personnel and time of security personnel, and passengers gets wasted in clearance," said Hasan. "We cannot afford to have a single mistake, and for this reason, we have organised a week-long program to educate people as India has the world's highest number of first-time flyers," he said.

"If you calculate the 25,000 (prohibited items) and 3 minutes, that is 75,000 minutes, that is about 1,250 hours... If passengers had not carried these things, we would have saved 1,250 hours... (that time) should go more for (dealing with) graver threats," he said at a briefing in the national capital, reported PTI.

Besides, the watchdog has asked airport operators to ensure that commercial advertisements are not displayed on the screens at security checkpoints inside the airports. "In the security checkpoint areas, we have already mandated that you cannot show commercial advertisements... All over the world, it is the security-related warnings that are given," he said and added that the time spent by passengers at security checkpoints should be used in a productive manner.