'Norms violated in filling Air-India vacancies'

More India-New Zealand flights on cards

BY A CORRESPONDENT
May 4, 2006

A member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Civil Aviation Ministry, Sanjay Raut, has accused the Air India management of violating mandatory norms in their bid to full up senior director-level vacancies, according to a Hindu report.

The member had stated, in a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Civil Aviation Secretary Ajay Prasad, that Air India's Chairman and Managing Director V Thulasidas had requested approval to fill up senior director-level vacancies in December 2000, and had requested for blanket approval to fill up posts in the future. However, Raut pointed out that while the Ministry had approved the request, it had not given a blanket clearance.

Pointing out that the Air India management would be conducting interviews for 11 senior director-level posts on May 13, 2006, Raut said, according to the report, "Mr. Thulasidas was directed to follow the extant procedure of prior approval as also directed to desist from any fresh creation of posts as an austerity measure and established policy."

He further emphasised, according to the report, "Some of the posts like Director (Corporate Training) is a freshly created post and thus violates the Ministry's provisos. What shocks me further is the fact that the 19 candidates for the generic/non-generic cadre posts have not even been informed as to the nature of assignment and the post for which they would be interviewed."

Raut was unhappy that when the Government had been attempting to curtail expenditures, Air India had upgraded posts, that had been previously downgraded to the general manager level.