Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari denied use of state aircraft

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government denied Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari permission to use a state aircraft to fly to Uttarakhand on Thursday, a move that is likely to create more bad blood between the Centre and the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA).

Koshyari had planned to use the aircraft for a two-day visit to his native state but following the Maharashtra government’s refusal of permission, he had to deboard the aircraft and board a commercial airline. He and his staff boarded the state government’s special VVIP Cessna Citation XLS aircraft from the Kalina terminal. They were waiting for take-off when they were informed from the state civil aviation department that they had not got any clearance from the chief minister’s office (CMO) for the aircraft to fly.

After 15 minutes of back and forth between the governor’s office, general administration department, the state civil aviation department and the CMO, it became clear that the permission for the trip to go ahead was not forthcoming. Apparently, the CMO did not even respond to calls from the governor’s office when clearance was sought.


The CMO blamed the governor's office for the incident, saying the latter was told a day earlier that the state had not given a sanction to the governor's request for using the VVIP aircraft. It said the governor's office was expected to ensure that the governor was taken to the airport only after all the travel arrangements were taken care of. It further said that it had taken a serious note of the lapse on the part of the officials in the Raj Bhavan and asked for responsibility to be fixed.

CM Uddhav Thackeray holds the charge of the general administration department and clearances from the CMO for flying the aircraft are considered a mere formality.