Air India or Patel Aviation? Why Praful Patel needs to be axed

Should Air India, which was financially ruined during the seven-year overlordship of Praful Patel, still be trying to shield Patel’s family from scrutiny for alleged misuse of his clout when he was civil aviation minister?

Seems so. In reply to a Right to Information (RTI) Act query, Air India confirmed last week that the airline had indeed changed the aircraft from A319 to A320 for a Bangalore-Male (Maldives) flight in April last year, for “commercial” reasons. But the airline declined to name the passengers who flew on it.

The speculation is that the aircraft was changed to accommodate Patel’s daughter, husband and in-laws in an A320, which has business class seats, as opposed to an A319, which doesn’t.

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According to a report in The Times of India which quotes the RTI reply, the change in aircraft was done “based on commercial requirements depending on the booked load/demand and also due to operational/engineering requirements.”

[caption id=“attachment_176207” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The former civil aviation minister has been widely alleged as having misused his position. Reuters”]  [/caption]

If this is the only reason for the change in aircraft, Air India should not have any reason to sit tight on the passenger list, especially the business class list. But the airline has cited privacy concerns as a reason for denying this information to RTI activist Subhash Agrawal. It also claimed that the decision to change the aircraft on 25 April 2010 “was taken by the central coordination cell and the decision intimated telephonically to the concerned personnel.''

That’s convenient, since it means any further RTI will not elicit any names, everything being confined to oral instructions. There were no file notings or written instructions.

However, as _Firstpost_ has pointed out before , misuse of official position by Praful Patel’s kin has been widely alleged, and these may not be restricted to this one occasion alone.

In fact, just a few days before the Male diversion, The Times of India had reported that a Delhi-Coimbatore Air India flight was aborted because the aircraft was needed to fly a charter for an Indian Premier League (IPL) team. Patel’s daughter Poorna Patel, and some IPL players, had to be flown from Chandigarh to Chennai, the newspaper said.

The scheduled flight, IC 7603, was to take off at 5.20 am on 20 April, but the passengers booked on it (and on the return flight) were put on another flight, the Delhi-Mumbai-Coimbatore flight IC 657. They arrived in Coimbatore at 11.45 am. The newspaper said: “Passengers booked on Coimbatore-Delhi flight 7604 were put on a Coimbatore-Mumbai-Delhi flight.” Some 75 passengers were inconvenienced due to these changes.

The passengers who were dumped from the scheduled flight to accommodate the IPL team lost three hours in the process. What could be the reason for favouring an IPL team over a scheduled flight? Poorna Patel was a hospitality manager with IPL.

The alleged misuse of Air India by Patel’s family members has prompted calls from the media for more detailed investigations and action against Patel.

Business Standard, in an editorial on Monday, said the issue should not be closed with Air India expressing its inability to provide details of who benefited from the aircraft changes: “The matter should not be allowed to rest there. The government itself should conduct an inquiry. Were these flights in fact changed on special instructions? Were the passengers who benefited Mr Patel’s family? How many aircraft have been altered in the past if there is a demand for business-class tickets? The answers to those questions should determine whether or not there was misuse of office. Such specific allegations cannot be allowed to go uninvestigated; and if proof is found that rules were bent, Mr Patel should be asked to leave the Union Cabinet.”

Firstpost could not agree more. Mr Patel should be shown the door. Shifting him from civil aviation to heavy industries - which is what the government did last year when Air India went into a tailspin - is not good enough.