Forget profits and hop into co plane

The Managing Director’s wife of the Bokaro Steel plant made 31 flights which were treated as official. Another executive director used an aircraft exclusively for availing of “liberalised air travel concession”.

In fact, for the Bokaro Steel Plant, a total of 191 flights were made exclusively for non-entitled passengers, while for IISCO this was 65.

The CAG has pointed out that the six aircraft,including the Beech Craft King Air (it crashed in February 1998), the Beech Craft Super King and the Beech Craft Twin Bonanza were meant to provide quick transport facility to senior executives and to meet emergency needs.

Instead, in the Bokaro plant for instance, according to the CAG, 56 percent of passengers who used the aircraft were not entitled to use them.

Worse, in the case of the Bhilai Steel Plant, and its aircraft that crashed in February 1998, according to the CAG, the flight plans and manifest were also incorrect. While the flight plan with the DGCA showed there were no passengers on board, there were actually six passengers. According to the report, SAIL attempted to stonewall the CAG’s probe. When the CAG asked the Bhilai Steel Plant management to furnish detailed information relating to entitled/non-entitled passengers, the report says, “neither the relevant records nor the desired information was furnished by the management.”

The management merely produced journey log books No 1 and 2and said that No 3 had been burned on the plane. Examination of the journey log books for the period April 1992 to January 1994 revealed that in 55 flights, there were 130 accompanying passengers but their names and designations were not included.

The CAG discovered that the approval for the flights was reportedly taken personally by the Personal Secretary to the MD. Similarly ex-post facto sanction for journeys performed was being obtained in March 1998 from MD by Chief Aviation Services.

The CAG has said that “this brings to light absence of professionalism and commercial prudence in the use of the infrastructure facilities created by the company at great cost.” The CAG has described this as “a serious symptom of a large malaise inflicting SAIL which if not checked will completely destroy the health of this navratna company.”

The CAG gave the final report in September this year.