The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently sanctioned the aviation security deployment plan and the survey conducted by security agencies for the new airport, sources said
The Union government has approved a 1,700-strong armed security contingent of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) for the Noida International Greenfield Airport, which is expected to begin operations in April next year.
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently sanctioned the aviation security deployment plan and the survey conducted by security agencies for the new airport, sources said.
The CISF, designated as the national civil aviation security force, has an aviation security group that currently guards 68 airports across the country with about 38,000 personnel. The force secures civil airports from potential terror and sabotage threats through its armed commandos, friskers, and intelligence wing officials.
The Noida airport unit will comprise around 1,700 personnel, both men and women, and will be headed by a deputy inspector general-rank officer. This deployment is for the first phase of the airport’s operationalization, according to sources.
Originally slated to open in September, the Noida airport’s launch has been postponed to April 2025 due to construction delays. The airport is being built in the Jewar area of Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar district, located 75 kilometers southeast of Delhi.
This major public-private partnership project by the UP government is set to become India’s largest airport upon completion. The airport will be developed over more than 5,000 hectares in four phases. In the first phase, it will feature one runway and a terminal building with an annual capacity of 12 million passengers, officials said.
The CISF, a Central Armed Police Force under the home ministry, was assigned the task of securing civil airports following the 1999 hijack of the Indian Airlines Kathmandu-Delhi flight IC-814 to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The first airport it secured was Jaipur in February 2000.
