Captain Atul Deo has been elected the new president of Aero Club of India bringing to an end the Gandhi family loyalist Satish Sharma's over three decades long innings as the head of the apex body of private and government flying clubs which train students to become commercial pilots.
Capt Pankul Mathur was elected vice president at the Annual General Meeting held on Friday, while Anisha Suresh will be the new secretary general. The elections were unanimous.
Prior to Sharma, ACI presidency was held by former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who handed over the mantle to his long time aide after becoming PM.
Reacting to the development, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said," Democratic processes had long been thwarted at the ACI and these have just been restored."
He said the elections were held in police presence and a Joint Director at the aviation regulator Directorate General Civil Aviation, Lalit Gupta, oversaw the proceedings as a representative of the government.
"We have just allowed democratic processes to work and they had been thwarted for too long. The government's job was to enable democratic processes to function, and once they were allowed to operate under normal circumstances, then we got the election result that the members of the Flying Club wanted," Jayant Sinha told PTI.
ACI sources said the overhaul was "steered" by Union Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy, himself a trained pilot, who recently became a member of the club council from Rajasthan.
An aviation expert said Rudy has been advocating strengthening aero sports in India and change in Aero Club leadership would help standardize the sector enabling Indian pilots to compete internationally.
Rudy, when contacted, told PTI, "It was a bloodless coup as the functioning at ACI had become impossible under Capt Sharma."
Sharma could not be contacted for comments.
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