Those associated with the civil aviation sector in India will remember former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for a number of reasons. This is particularly so since the aviation sector is back in the news, because of the Government’s failed attempts at finding a buyer for the cash-starved Air India.

In his last tenure (from 1999 to 2004), the Vajpayee’s Government tried to sell the erstwhile Air India, an attempt that failed. At that time, Air India and Indian Airlines were run as separate entities. They were merged during the tenure of Manmohan Singh, who succeeded Vajpayee.

Vajpayee’s government was also the first to attempt to create airport infrastructure. The Narendra Modi Government is trying to do something similar now, with its regional connectivity scheme of taking flying to small, un-served and under-served airports.

Laying a road map

There were other developments too in aviation during Vajpayee’s tenure, which still have an impact on the sector. During his government’s tenure, former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra headed a Committee, which prepared a report on a roadmap for the aviation sector. The Committee looked at various issues, including allowing domestic airlines to start flying on international routes, thereby breaking the monopoly that Air India and Indian Airlines enjoyed.

The eight chapters that the report tackled included areas such as fiscal issues, airports, private sector participation in aviation and air traffic control. Even today, this report forms a significant part of any discussion on the aviation sector.

While the committee was still at work, Vajpayee, while addressing a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Bali in 2003, announced an open sky agreement with the regional grouping.

What this meant was that airlines from the regional grouping could launch a daily service to each of the metro cities in India. Besides, they were also allowed to launch as many flights as they liked to 18 tourist destinations in India. This is something which continues till today.

Concessions were also given to the less developed countries among ASEAN. So a carrier, say, from Myanmar was allowed to stop in India and pick up passengers before taking them to, say, Bangkok or other tourist destinations in the region.

Regional co-operation

Within a few months of Vajpayee’s impromptu announcement, the Indian Government concluded an open sky agreement with Sri Lanka that was part of the opening up of the Indian skies with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries.

The SAARC open sky agreement meant that Sri Lankan Airlines, which was then being run by Dubai-based Emirates Airlines, became the largest foreign carrier operating flights to and from India.

It was also during Vajpayee’s tenure that the Government followed a limited open sky policy mainly during winter that allowed foreign airlines to operate more flights from India to ensure that flyers did not suffer because of bad weather conditions in some parts of the country, especially North India.

But there were some lapses as well.

Like the Vajpayee government’s attempts to sell stake in Air India came to naught after the Tata-Singapore Airlines consortium, the lone bidder that was left in the fray, withdrew its bid.

Further, attempts initiated by his Government to allow private sector carriers from India to fly abroad could not be cleared in the agenda of the last Cabinet meeting. It was the Manmohan Singh Government which came to power in 2004 that cleared the proposal to allow Jet Airways and Air Sahara to begin international operations. This broke Air India’s and India Airlines’ monopoly of flying international.

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