Airport safety officer transferred for taking on errant developers?

A

senior aviation safety officer

who objected to a

builder's construction plan

around the airport because it jeopardised air safety was on Wednesday barred from entering the Sahar office she had been going to for 12 years, with the authorities telling her she was transferred to Kolkata “in public interest“, and had been relieved of duty while she was on leave.

A shocked Mangala Narasimhan, deputy general manager (aviation safety) with Airports Authority of India, will now move court against AAI's September 12 transfer order, alleging that it is out of turn and meant solely to harass her.

Yesterday, when Narasimhan, 48, went to the

Air Traffic Services

complex, she found that her entry pass had been invalidated following a relieving order issued on September 22.

She has also sought a hearing from AAI's grievance cell, alleging that the transfer flouts service norms, since transfers in the air traffic control cadre -to which she belongs -were completed in June itself.

“What makes this abrupt, out-of-turn transfer worse is that transfer and reliving orders were issued in a hurry when I was on leave,“ Narasimhan said in her letter to the head of AAI's grievance cell, S Suresh.

Her daughter, a teenager with special needs, is set to appear for Board exams this academic year and AAI service norms exempt such officials from transfer till exams are over, she further stated.

“But the hurried orders did not give me time to even get a certificate from my daughter's school and defer the transfer,“ Narasimhan said. In June 2011, when Narasimhan was deputy general manager in charge of clearing construction in vicinity of Santacruz and Juhu airports, she refused to sign a set of no-objection certificates granted to some structures near the airports, stating that permissions granted to the builder to construct buildings taller than the prescribed height were illegal. The exposé had led to a public interest litigation in the high court.

The files and documents pertaining to the case are in her custody and will be central to any enquiry -should one be initiated -into the alleged violations.

The construction site was within 650 metres of the city airport's main runway 09, and when she brought this to the notice of the AAI chairman and aviation ministry, she was moved to the post of deputy general manager (aviation safety).

Narasimhan had also fought AAI's decision to shut down Juhu airports secondary runway, alleging that some officials had allowed builders to illegally construct structures higher than the prescribed limit, which had led to the closure.

The officer alleged there were many ATC officers in Mumbai as well as her hometown Chennai who have never been posted out of their hometown for the last 20-odd years. “Unless such officers who are senior to me are transferred out, I should not be transferred out of Chennai for a second time in 2009, or to Kolkata now,“ she said.

Narasimhan also said how she was being transferred to a non-existent cadre. “The operational AAI cadres are air traffic control, communication and navigation services, firefighting services and engineering. There is no such thing called as aviation safety cadre, to which I am being posted,“ she said.

AAI officials refused to comment on any of Narasimhan's allegations.