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Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation chief Ashwani Lohani, credited with reviving tourism in the state, will head struggling government carrier Air India.
The appointments committee of the Cabinet on Thursday approved the appointment of Lohani, a 1980 batch officer of the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers, as chairman and managing director of Air India, for three years.
After over a decade, Air India will be headed by someone outside the Indian Administrative Service. Before Lohani, J N Gogoi, the airline’s engineering director, held charge as acting managing director in 2001-2003.
Lohani was chairman and managing director of India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) in the previous National Democratic Alliance government and his tenure was mired in controversy, as he was shifted back to his parent cadre for reportedly opposing disinvestment of ITDC’s flagship Ashoka Hotel. This had happened when the finances of Ashoka were improving under him and a tug of war between the disinvestment and the tourism ministries was on.
He had held the post between July 2001 and December 2002 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister. In the profile section of his blog, Lohani says, “As CMD, ITDC achieved turnaround of the corporation.”
Lohani will succeed Rohit Nandan at Air India. Nandan’s three-year term ended last year but sources said he had received another extension till September 21 and Lohani would take charge only next month. Nandan’s latest extension was supposed to end on Friday. When contacted, Lohani declined to comment.
The appointment comes at a time when the government is finding it difficult to make the airline more sustainable. The government has been continuously infusing capital into Air India: Rs 2,500 crore in 2015-16, Rs 5,780 crore in 2014-15, and Rs 6,000 crore each in 2012-13 and 2013-14.
That apart, the government, in its supplementary demand for grants, provided Rs 800 crore as additional equity infusion.
The government seems to be in no mood to privatise the carrier and expects it will achieve operational profits next year.
A graduate engineer from Indian Railway Institute of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering, Lohani was formerly the chief administrative officer at the Indian Railways Organisation for Alternate Fuels division for the ministry of railways. He was also chief mechanical engineer at Northern Railway and a fellow at the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport.
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Lohani’s LinkedIn profile describes him as “Mr Turnaround”, instrumental in successfully promoting the ‘Hindustan ka Dil Dekho’ campaign in Madhya Pradesh in 2006. Lohani is highly active on social media platforms. He has an updated LinkedIn profile, tweets frequently, and runs his own blog.
Earlier, Lohani expressed confidence that if given an opportunity, he would turn around Air India within a year. “Having headed a large hospitality sector CPSU (central public sector undertaking) in the past and now, a state PSU, successfully, I have acquired a fair amount of insight into successful running of PSUs...If given a chance, of course, a year is all it would take for a turnaround, even for a mammoth organisation such as Air India,” he had said in a post dated July 7, 2009.
In another post, he criticised the ‘India Shining’ re-election campaign of the Vajpayee government. “India Shining, has been one of the finest examples of disconnect in recent times, disconnect that the topmost echelons of the sarkari tantra generally have with the ground reality,” he said in a blog post on May 26, 2011.
When SpiceJet was on verge of shutting down last year, Lohani had ‘tweeted’, “SpiceJet also sinks. On the pattern of Air India and Kingfisher, the impending demise of SpiceJet may also be due to leadership failure.”
He found a place in the Limca Book of Records in 2007 for acquiring four engineering degrees at the age of 21.
While working with the tourism department of Madhya Pradesh, the state bagged four national tourism awards in 2008, including the award for the "Best tourism performing state in the country" and three national tourism awards in the year 2009. Lohani has also been felicitated with Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Award “Icon of Change” in May 2010.
He has authored two books, Smoking Beauties and Winning at Work . He is also a Guinness world record holder for successfully running the Fairy Queen Engine, certified as the world’s oldest working locomotive, in 1998.
Earlier, the posts of chairman and managing director were separate. IAS officer V Thulasidas, who replaced Arora in December 2013, was given the charge of chairman and managing director of Air India. The practice of dual charge (chairman and managing director ) has continued since then.
