New Delhi, April 13: The Supreme Court on Tuesday threatened to entrust scrutiny of air route allocations to ex-CAG Vinod Rai, while strongly disapproving assigning lucrative destinations to private airlines and leaving the national carrier to provide air connectivity to uneconomic and far-flung regions.
Finding the government dilly-dallying on its promise to rework the 22-year-old route dispersal guidelines to force private airlines to provide link to smaller cities like Shimla and northeastern states, a bench of CJI T S Thakur and Justice R Banumathi told additional solicitor general P S Patwalia that there was an urgent need for honest scrutiny of the allocation of air routes.
” We feel ex-CAG Vinod Rai would be the right person to probe if route dispersal guidelines were being used to allocate destinations to private airlines as largesse at the cost of the national carrier. We want it to be done by an expert body which will give a stinking report to call the government’s bluff,” the bench said.
“The government feels people in smaller cities like Shimla and northeastern region can suffer without proper air connectivity as they are not politically important. You are more concerned about commercial interest of private airlines than the interest of the people,” it added.
Patwalia said proper air connectivity was provided to the northeastern states, J&K as well as Andamans. “Probably, Shimla is the only exception,” he said. The bench said, “Subramanian Swamy has already filed a petition (challenging the Jet-Etihad deal). So many skeletons will tumble out of the cupboard once a probe is ordered. Let there be scrutiny of the system and it will augur well for the country.
The national carrier is going into debt while others are prospering. You are distributing routes as largess but not insisting on the obligation to fly to smaller destinations.”
Patwalia replied, “Whether Rai is entrusted with the probe or not, there is no skeleton in our cupboard. Give us time for a week and I will try to convince them to expedite revisiting of route dispersal guidelines.”
The SC will hear the case on April 21.
