Air India - Indian Airlines merger a collective decision of UPA govt: Praful Patel

NEW DELHI: Former civil aviation minister Praful Patel on Tuesday termed as “multi-tiered and collective” the decisions to merge Air India and Indian Airlines, and the order to purchase 111 aircraft by the state-run carriers, a day after the CBI decided to launch investigation.

The CBI had on Monday registered three FIRs to probe alleged irregularities in purchase and lease of aircraft by the two airliners, and surrender of profitable routes by them to favour domestic and foreign carriers. Besides, it had also registered a preliminary enquiry (PE) to probe the controversial merger.

Patel said the CBI had registered the PE to go into these issues in 2013 when the UPA was in power. Asserting that “all decisions were multi-tiered and collective,” he said “the aircraft purchase order was cleared by an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by P Chidambaram and the merger was cleared by an EGoM headed by Pranab Mukherjee.” “Both the decisions were ratified by the Cabinet,” the NCP leader said.

The CBI has registered three FIRs and a PE to go into the controversial decisions made by the erstwhile Manmohan Singh government.