State flying school to reopen

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan state flying school that astounded nation with glaring discrepancies and irregularities in issuing commercial pilot licenses through fraudulent means is all set to be revived. Taking lessons from the earlier debacles, the government of Rajasthan is in no hurry to restart it. And this time the officials of directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) would be part of the recruitment and interview process.
After a gap of four years, the civil aviation department will start the process of recruitment for various posts from July 13 onwards.
"We have asked the DGCA officials to be part of the recruitment process to make it more transparent. The recruitments for the post of chief flying instructor and other technical posts would be done," deputy secretary, civil aviation, Gautam Mukherjee told TOI on Monday.
When asked about the opening of the flying school, Mukherjee, said, "All I can say is that we are starting the recruitment. As far as commencing the regular operations of the flying school is concerned, it is a very complex issue."
Sources added that government of Rajasthan will have to go for various licenses before giving a nod to start the flying school.
Officials added that all the dubious activities have been done away with and almost every officer involved in malpractices was either suspended or terminated. "We are now aiming at bringing in the best of commercial pilots," an officer said.
It may be recalled that the Rajasthan flying school hit headlines in 2008 when the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) exposed a scam when one of the trainees of the school Nidhi Vashishtha approached the bureau claiming that she was trained only for 22 hours but the chief flying officer Mahendra Chaudhary mentioned 169 hours of flying in the school record and sent it to the DGCA. During the investigation, names of 14 pilots had come up who were issued flying certificates through dubious means by chief flying inspector of the Rajasthan state flying school at the Sanganer Airport. These certificates were used by the pilots to get the commercial pilot licenses (CPL) from the DGCA. Similar arrests were made in Delhi and Haryana.
How state ACB played the whistleblower
The state's ACB played the role of a whistleblower in the case of pilots fraudulently getting commercial pilot licenses from the DGCA. While the Delhi Police had only stumbled upon the malpractice, arresting some pilots, ACB, Rajasthan, brought the whole scam out into the open.
ACB had also written to the CBI director and requested them for a nationwide probe into the Rajasthan ACB findings.
In response to the letter an SP rank officer of CBI from New Delhi had visited the agency's headquarters recently and sought details of the 14 FIRs lodged against pilots who fraudulently got CPLs from the DGCA.