Khandu’s death calls for safer flying

The New Indian Express First Published : 06 May 2011 11:04:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 06 May 2011 12:07:21 AM IST
Sorrow over the untimely death of former Aruanchal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu will be accompanied by deep regret and bewilderment over the belief that he may have been responsible for the fatal accident which claimed his life as also of those accompanying him in his helicopter flight. In a curious coincidence, a parliamentary committee headed by Sitaram Yechury noted on the day that Khandu’s body was found that VIPs often forced their pilots to take off in adverse conditions. Considering that the same fears were aired after former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s helicopter crash in 2009, the committee was evidently on the right track.
It can be recalled that the former BJP president, Rajnath Singh, once forced his pilot to take off in pitch darkness with only the headlights of a few cars lighting the runway. Singh was lucky to survive, but as the committee has pointed out, “such violations of rules have led to fatal accidents”. Apart from Khandu and Reddy, former Lok Sabha Speaker G M C Balayogi had died in a helicopter crash in 2002. A year earlier, Madhavrao Scindia died when his chartered plane crashed.
Compounding the effects of a disregard for safety is the unreliability of the crafts which, to quote the committee again, lack the necessary equipment to fly in hilly terrain. Doubts have also been raised about the qualifications of pilots, which is not surprising considering the recent scandal about those with fake licences flying commercial jets. Evidently, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has much to answer for, including the reason why a large number of posts in the DGCA are lying vacant.
While Khandu’s death has refocussed attention on the many flaws in the aviation sector, the delay in finding the bodies points to poor surveillance capabilities, which can hinder rescue operations in cases where there may be survivors. The fact that villagers near the crash site were the first to locate the bodies while satellite imagery and flying missions could not despite repeated sorties over five days does not speak well of the country’s technological capacities in this regard.