Now, airport-like security check at Secunderabad, Hyderabad station

HYDERABAD: Three stations under the South Central Railway (SCR) — two in Telangana and one in Andhra Pradesh — have made it to list of railway stations to get airport-like security upgrade. Passengers will have to arrive 15-20 minutes before the scheduled departure of trains to complete the security check process, just like at airports.
Sources told TOI that the railway board has listed Secunderabad, Hyderabad and Tirupati stations for the integrated security system upgrade.The SCR zone has five ‘A1’ and 31 ‘A’ category stations which add more than Rs 60 crore in revenue to the railway coffers every year.
But what’s surprising is that the list eludes important stations like Kacheguda, Lingampalli, Vijayawada and a few others, which serve as rail transit hubs across the zone. “The number of trains originating from Kacheguda station has gone up over the years. It should have been considered for airport-like security as it’s a key link in the railways network,” said a transport expert.
Strangely, four stations from the East Coast Railway (ECoR) — Visakhapatnam, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri — feature in the list. ECoR is a comparatively smaller railway zone with four ‘A1’ and 18 ‘A’ category stations.
The security system will include random frisking and real-time face recognition software, which can alert the Railway Protection Force (RPF) command centre about known offenders before they are allowed access to the platforms. However, the frisking process at the three SCR stations will be done through ‘foolproof’ electronic mechanism. “The security personnel will be provided with cutting edge gadgets like luggage scanners, door-frame metal detector, hand-held metal detectors and under-vehicle scanners,” said a SCR official.
For these three stations, a detailed security plan is being mooted in view of the many entry and exit points. The points that invite trespassers to platforms would be closed through boundary walls, while other entry points would have sealed gates and collapsible barriers in addition to RPF kiosks with high-end monitoring gadgets.