Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Efforts on to speed up immigration clearance

CHENNAI: A new system to quickly clear passengers at immigration counters in the international arrival area will be introduced at Indian airports on April 1.

Under the Advance Passenger Information System, the names and other details of passengers of an international flight from another country will be sent to a centralised network in India.

The information will then be disseminated through the Indian immigration network, says an airport source.

Any international flight has to send the details within 15 minutes from its departure from an airport.

This will help immigration authorities carry out verification of the passengers even before the flights reach the Indian airports.

When the passengers reach the immigration counter, the source says, they need not wait for long to complete the formalities.

Initially, the system will be introduced in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi.

The Union government and the airlines are at the job now, and information will be entrusted to Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques, a France-based service provider for airlines worldwide.

Some airlines are in talks with the government on the charges they have to pay for transmitting the information. A few airlines have requested the government to extend the deadline for introducing the system.

But the government is keen on going ahead with it from April 1.

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