A bench headed by acting chief justice Madan B Lokur asked the government to file its response on the allegation that "deliberate and misdirected" decisions and actions drove Air India and Indian Airlines into huge losses.
The Delhi high court today issued a notice to Centre and CBI on a PIL seeking a probe into alleged mismanagement of public carrier Air India and Indian Airlines, leading to losses to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees.
A bench headed by acting chief justice Madan B Lokur asked the government to file its response on the allegation that "deliberate and misdirected" decisions and actions drove Air India and Indian Airlines into huge losses.
The court asked the government to file its response by May 12 when the matter would be taken up for further hearing.
It passed the order on a PIL filed by an NGO centre for Public Interest Litigation alleging that government went in for a huge unnecessary fleet expansion programme in which purchase orders for 111 aircraft were given costing a whopping Rs67,000 crore.
"It is in the fitness of things that when such a huge loss has been caused to the public exchequer and reputation and functioning of national carriers have been damaged irreparably, an investigation be made so as to fix individual responsibility," advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO, said.
He referred to the findings of two Parliamentary Committees which came to the conclusion that aircraft acquisition programme lacked transparency and needed to be probed.
"Direct an SIT/CBI investigation into the unnecessary purchase and lease of a large number of aircraft and deliberate loss of market share of National Aviation Corporation of India Limited (Nacil), formed through the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines, through loss of profit-making routes, for unearthing the role of senior officers of the civil aviation ministry and top management of Nacil," the petitioner submitted.
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