CISF to provide security consultancy to 5-star hotels

After refusing to provide its commandos to guard five-star hotels, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has now decided to offer security consultancy to these luxury facilities across the country in order to prepare them against 26/11-like terror strikes.
Sources in the paramilitary force said a blueprint was prepared, keeping in mind two specific terror incidents where luxury hotels and their guests were targeted in the past that led to the loss of numerous lives.
One was the 2008 Mumbai attack, where the Taj Mahal and Trident hotels were targeted by heavily armed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists. The other incident also took place in the same year, when an explosives-laden dump truck was detonated in front of the Marriott hotel in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, killing over 54 people, the sources told PTI.

Once the security consultancy blueprint was approved, the force would write to some of the prominent five-star hotels in the country, proposing to render the services of its special unit and experts and provide specific consultancy on security issues to them, the sources said.
As part of the consultancy, the CISF would tell the client where to install CCTV cameras, deploy security staff, how to check access control, train the hotel security staff and install emergency response gadgets at their premises.
The service would come with a fee in the range of Rs 4-5 lakh for each luxury hotel once the consultancy was done and CISF experts surveyed the premises.

After the 2008 Mumbai attack, the CISF was mandated by the government to provide security to the private sector also.

But the force had refused to provide its personnel to the five-star hotels as its priorities in the private sector, given the limited manpower, was in the energy and software domains, the source said.
The CISF, at present, guards nine private facilities, including IT major Infosys' premises in Bengaluru, Pune and Mysore, the Reliance corporate park in Navi Mumbai and the Patanjali food and herbal park in Haridwar.
Late last year, the paramilitary force had made a similar proposal to schools in the wake of the killing of a student in a Gurgaon school.

"A total of 28 schools from across the country have expressed their intent to take the CISF security consultancy to make their premises safe for the children.
"While four of them have deposited the service fee and the survey has begun at their premises, the rest are at various stages of consideration," CISF Additional Director General Alok K Pateria said.
Some of the prominent schools which are in talks with the CISF for this service are the Doon School in Dehradun, La Martiniere in Kolkata, Scindia School in Gwalior, Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan in Delhi and Gaurs International School in Greater Noida.

The CISF security consultancy wing was raised in 1999 and till now, it has provided expert advice to over 150 organisations or institutions, including the IITs, IIMs, RBI and the National Police Academy in Hyderabad.