The Central Information Commission has served a show-cause on Alliance Air for not disclosing the details of a flight which was pulled out of its original schedule in 2010, less than 12 hours before departure, allegedly to facilitate a service carrying the daughter of a former Civil Aviation Minister and a few members of an Indian Premier League team.
The CIC issued the notice after Right to Information activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal complained about the public sector company's partial compliance with its order.
“The CPIO [Central Public Information Officer] is hereby directed to provide complete information to the appellant and show cause why a penalty of Rs. 25,000 … should not be imposed on him for causing a delay of more than 100 days in providing the information to the appellant,” Information Commissioner Sushma Singh said in her January 20 order.
“The CIC clearly stated in its order on my appeal that it is a matter of partial compliance. I am very satisfied with the strict stand taken by the CIC. Otherwise, these public officials use these companies for their private purposes and turn them into white elephants. The CIC has said the earlier partial compliance was eyewash and incomplete,” Mr. Agrawal, who had filed the query and the appeals, told The Hindu from Delhi on Tuesday.
He first filed an application in April 26, 2010, and then on March 26, 2011, after newspaper reports said the former Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel's daughter Poorna Patel requested that a chartered flight be operated on April 20, 2010, to fly down a few IPL players from Chandigarh to Chennai.
To facilitate this flight, reports said, the airline aborted a Delhi-Coimbatore Air India flight (IC 7603) at the last minute, against the rules. It was also reported that the flight flew back empty after dropping the guests in Chennai.
Alliance Air earlier responded to Mr. Agrawal's application, saying the chartered flight was operated on April 20, 2010, at the request of India Cements Limited, Chennai. “The charter flight was operated on commercial considerations to earn additional revenue, and it is the normal business of the group of companies,” it said in its reply in March 2011. But it refused to divulge the name of the person who made the request for the charter flight, despite the CIC's February 23, 2011 order, which said: “The commission is of the view that the public interest in disclosure of the sought-for information outweighs the harm to the protected interest, as impropriety and favouritism in aborting the flight at the behest of an influential person/persons, in violation of the rules, have been alleged by the appellant and in the news reports provided by him.”
The CIC directed the CPIO to “disclose the name of the person/body/organisation making request for the chartered flight.”
