‘Difficult to even pronounce Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak’: Aviation Bill opposed in Lok Sabha for Hindi name

Premachandran argued that the Bill was in violation of Articles 348 1B, 120 and 340 of the Constitution. He also said the Bill was not in accordance with Section 3 of the Official Languages Act.

“The name of the original Bill was Aircraft Bill, 1934. The title of the Bill was in English. The content of (this) Bill is also in English. But the government just wants to change the name of the Bill. For people from South India, it is very difficult to even pronounce Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak. What is the logical reason behind this? I am questioning the legislative competence of the Bill,” Premachandran said.

He then quoted relevant provisions of the Constitution which stipulated that the language of parliamentary Bills should be in English.

“The concerns that Premachandran ji has raised have been addressed in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Sanhita. This has been discussed in detail earlier. We are not violating any constitutional provision by mentioning the name of the Act as Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak. We are trying to create a new identity of India and for that, we have kept this name. This should not be a problem for anyone. The text is in English only. There should not be any problem,” he said.

Explaining the Bill, Naidu said, “The Aircraft Bill was brought during the British era. Since then, 21 amendments have been made. These have been plugged into the original Act in bits and pieces. Because of this, there was a lot of confusion in the Act, lot of grey areas, lot of redundancies. Whatever guidelines the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) suggests we follow as globally we are an important signatory of the ICAO. That is why we have brought a new law that will not only remove redundancies but also accommodate ICAO recommendations.”