Shahnawaz is Shah of favours

Documents available with The Sunday Express show that a list of 57 people entitled for the inam was provided by the minister. A small asterisk, though, points to an error, ‘‘Serial No 50 and 56 — H.S. Bhatia and Harbinder Singh — are the same person.’’

Hussain’s extravagance flies in the face of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) norms dated March, 1998 that a Cabinet Minister can have a personal staff of up to 15 people including drivers, peons and secretarial staff. Ministers, however, routinely break them by putting staff on the rolls of PSUs under them.

Hussain justifies his action. He told The Sunday Express: ‘‘There is a DoPT order I am told which allows once-a-year payment to our personal staff. As far as having 56 people on my personal staff is concerned, officially I am allowed only 13 people but I work late very often and this ministry cannot survive if we stop working at 5 p.m. There can be emergencies and so on. I work till 2 a.m. sometimes and the allocated staff is only enough for being deployed at my residence. So I have often got staff from, say, Indian Airlines and it is these who have been paid the honorarium. This is nothing unusual.’’

Hussain’s regal ways don’t end with his huge durbar. He has extended his magnanimity to former civil aviation ministers as well. The minister has decided to give lifetime perks to 29 former ministers who have held the portfolio. The list includes even people who passed away but has a name hurriedly added at the end — that of Hussain.

The perks include upgradation of tickets for their travel to the highest class available by Indian Airlines as well as for international travel by Air-India.

A ministry order of March 3 instructs top bosses of Indian Airlines, Air-India, Airports Authority of India and the Commissioner of Security of the ministry to issue security passes for former ministers to all airports, passes for assistants to the ex-ministers at select airports, issue parking label for one car in the VIP Parking area and VIP lounge facilities both at the time of arrival and departure. The staff of the Airports Authority of India has been instructed to escort all the former ministers at arrival and departure.

The list has 29 typed names, with Hussain’s handwritten. It starts with Nityanand Kanungo who was minister for civil aviation during June 1964-July 1965, Deputy Prime Minitser L.K. Advani who had a 15-day stint in July 1979 and even the Late Rajiv Gandhi (December 1984-September 1985). It also has former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar who had an 11-day stint in November, 1990 and the recent ministers, Jayanthi Natarajan, C.M. Ibrahim, Sharad Yadav, Ananth Kumar and Chamanlal Gupta.

Hussain has an excuse for this too. ‘‘I am not issuing free tickets or passes like the Railways. All I am doing is issuing some passes so that these people can park their cars in the right instead of the left parking lot. So where’s the problem?’’

When asked why his name was a handwritten entry at the end of the list, Hussain first said that there was some ‘badmashi’ (mishief) but later clarified that the list was just one of all ministers so far. ‘‘Now they can’t refer to me as the ex-minister otherwise I’ll make the officer ex-…,’’ he added.