Govt nominees may seek Air India appointments’ ratification

New Delhi: The controversy over high-profile appointments at Air India just refuses to die down.
According to official sources, the government nominees on the airline board are expected to insist on these appointments eing ratified by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) or at least by the civil aviation minister.
But is it possible to get these appointments ratified in retrospect? This remains to be seen.
On Thursday, official sources said that the proposal to appoint a COO for Air India Express, chief of training and chief information officer for AI was consistently opposed by government nominees on the airline board in previous meetings. Independent directors have already voiced their objections to these appointments, with the first two having been made at salaries of over Rs1 crore per annum.
What is the objection of government nominees to these appointments? “Appointments above the joint secretary level and on a certain pay scale should necessarily be cleared by the ACC. The two government nominees on AI board opposed these appointments since they were neither cleared by the ACC nor by the civil aviation minister.
Another director in the ministry looking after Air India also wrote separately to the airline asserting that the ACC should clear these appointments. But the board, in its wisdom, went ahead with the appointments anyway.”
12/11/10 Sindhu Bhattacharya/Daily News & Analysis

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Categories: Air India Nov 2010