India

Don’t have any information regarding privatisation of Air India, – Ministry of Civil Aviation

Don’t have any information regarding privatisation of Air India, – Ministry of Civil Aviation

The Ministry of Civil Aviation has revealed in the reply of an RTI application that it does not have any information regarding the proposed privatisation of Air India. The Right to Information application was filed by a social activist, Nutan Thakur, she had requested the ministry to provide documents related to Air India’s proposed divestment, including those exchanged between the ministry and different offices.

Chandra Kishore Shukla, Under Secretary in the ministry, however, informed her that the information sought is not available with the ministry in any material form, hence it shall be treated as “Nil information”.

Earlier on July 11, S.K. Bajaj, an Air India official, had also said in an RTI reply that the carrier has not made any communication with any other officers nor has it received any communication from any of the departments in respect to its proposed divestment.

Nutan Thakur told IANS that she found this strange. “It is strange that the concerned ministry and the company seem to be out of the loop in the process,” she said.

On June 28, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced that the Cabinet has given in-principle approval for Air India stake divestment.

“In-principle approval for Air India divestment has been given. The Civil Aviation Ministry’s proposal for formation of a group under the chairmanship of the Finance Minister to decide the modalities of divestment process has also been accepted,” he had said. After which the chairman of the Mahindra group had said that he don’t have the guts to by Air India.

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Shubham Jain