Provision of secured and uninterrupted supply of power is an essential pre-requisite for the electrical industry. Hence, FACTS devices need to be employed efficiently to ensure the security of the power system. This study proposes, a repetition of severity-based strategy of placement of interline power flow controller (IPFC) using composite severity index (CSI) for contingency management. The formulated CSI is a combination of real power performance index) and line stability index L_mn . Thus, the CSI is expected to provide an exact measure of stress on the lines in terms of MW overloading and voltage instability. The IPFC is further tuned for a multi-objective function using firefly algorithm. To verify the proposed methodology, it has been tested and implemented on IEEE 30 and Indian utility 62 bus system. The system has been further tested under highly stressful condition by increasing the load on the maximum loaded bus up to the critical value. The results have been presented and analysed to determine the effectiveness of IPFC for contingency management.