The loss-making national carrier Air India (AI)'s financial woes assumed a political colour today with both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena demanding a thorough probe into the airline's monetary mess.
While the Shiv Sena-led unions have called upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), its ally BJP demanded that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and Chief Vigilance Commission (CVC) inquire into the government-run airline's functioning.
"The CAG and CVC must investigate the need and financial burden of the Rs 55,000-crore aircraft purchases. The UPA Government and Civil Aviation Ministry are responsible for the present horrible financial crisis in Air India," former MP and BJP leader Kirit Somaiya told reporters here.
The real reasons behind the present financial crisis are the interest burden, repayment and overhead expenses, he claimed.
While other air-carriers world wide have either deferred or cancelled deliveries of aircraft, Air India was still going ahead with its purchase plans despite bleeding financially, Somaiya said, adding "there is a need to re-evaluate the whole purchase."
The CAG and CVC must investigate the need, requirement and project proposal of this huge purchase and its financial implications, he said.
Earlier, the Sena-backed trade unions in Air India, which met the airline's Chairman and Managing Director, Arvind Jadhav, yesterday made a similar demand and also sought the Prime Minister's intervention on the issue.
"We demand immediate intervention by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Air India issue," Shiv Sena's Rajya Sabha MP and Air India union leader Bharat Kumar Raut said.
"We also demand that the Government appoint a Committee, either a JPC or a Parliamentary Committee, to look into the problems that the national air-carrier faces today and fix responsibility on those who have brought it to such a pass and suggest corrective measures," Raut said.
Terming the Air India's decision to defer payment of June salary to employees by 15 days and asking senior executives to voluntarily give up their July salaries an unilateral one, Raut said the management should be transparent and accountable to the employees as well.
"Shockingly, while the management was talking about delaying salaries to employees, the same management had only 10 days earlier paid arrears totalling Rs 40 crore to senior engineering executives," he said.
Against this backdrop, some of the management's decisions such as on aircraft selection, leasing and acquisition, should be probed, the Sena leader said.
Similarly, the disastrous gifting of bilateral rights to foreign air-carriers and the so-called open-sky policy should all be re-looked at by the Government, Raut said.
The reckless sale and transfer of Air India and Indian Airlines' land assets in Kalina and Sahar (Mumbai) to private developer, Mumbai International Airport Ltd, on a platter for construction of five-star hotels and offices in the name of airport development should also be probed by the committee, Raut demanded.
