Patna HC orders vacation of govt-bungalows
It refers to order from the Patna HC that decided against retaining government-bungalows by former Chief Ministers of Bihar. Similar decisions have been there from other High Courts also.
It is noteworthy that MP Chief Minister Kamal Nath provided government-bungalows to former Chief Ministers Digvijay Singh (Congress) and Shivraj Singh Chauhan (BJP) in Bhopal where his predecessor Shivraj Singh Chauhan misused his discretionary power of allotting government-bungalows to former BJP Chief Ministers Uma Bharti, Babulal Gaur, Kailash Joshi but not to Digvijay Singh of Congress.
Supreme Court should sue-motto take cognizance of the matter and remove the nuisance of allotting government-bungalows to former Chief Ministers in all states by extending its order of 07.05.2018 to all the states. Such decision from Supreme Court will save precious court-hours of various High Courts to deal with writs requiring vacation of government-bungalows by former Chief Ministers of respective states.
It is noteworthy that even the most advanced nation of the world USA with democratic governance of system provides just half of the last-drawn salary to its former Presidents as the only post-retirement benefit, with former US Presidents even doing job in private establishment or engaged in farming etc after their retirement as most powerful political ruler of the world.
Madhu Agrawal
Let airlines breathe freely
The recent announcement by CAPA India has predicted the growth of the Indian aviation industry with the need for more (employment) opportunities in the areas of maintenance, pilot requirement, security and engineering by 2028. The announcement comes at a time when the Indian aviation industry is now hit by issues like mounting losses of both full-service carriers and low-cost carriers, operational issues, crew management issues, accumulating ATF prices and the govt’s unwillingness to bring it under GST component and management-ownership tussle owing stake sale of some of the major airlines.
The government, on the other hand, is making much of the efforts to bring hopes in the Indian skies through UDAN scheme to connect to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and NABH Nirman scheme aimed at airport’s infrastructural development, in a bid to move beyond 100 airports in India by 2020. The airline carriers are further compelled to certain prevailing market/industry pressures owing to some self-imposed factors like ownership/management control, heavy operational costs, financial constraints leading nonpayment of remuneration, inevitable ATF/GST component and levying of taxes on imported components, grounding of flight operations/schedules etc.
The CAPA report has further specified the need for opportunities in the areas of aircraft/engineering maintenance, security, ground handling requirements and availability of enough number of pilots to fly more planes in the Indian skies. One only hopes that the projection may help to lead to a positive outcome at least by a few more years. While the outcome of general elections is expected in few months, one also hopes that the new successive government to allow certain major exceptions that will only enable the airlines to breathe freely in the skies at least for a while.
Varun S D
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
