A move by the National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL),formed after merging Air India and Indian Airlines,to award the contract for its call centre services to InterGlobe,a private firm with business interests in rival private airline IndiGo,has kicked off a controversy. There were apprehensions that the move would make strategic and revenue impacting NACIL information available to IndiGo. Curiously,the objection has come from National Commission for Scheduled Castes chairman Buta Singh,who in a recent letter to Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel called the move just unimaginable. Calling it sensitive and shocking information,he said NACIL was considering to award the contract to M/s InterGlobe,which is also running Indigo Airlines. It is an open secret that Indigo Air has thrived on the consistent loss of market share of NACIL or erstwhile Indian Airlines,over the last few years. It is not difficult to imagine that many top officials of the erstwhile Indian Airlines have also joined Indigo Airlines since last few years and show them the way, Singh wrote in the letter,a copy of which is with The Indian Express. NACIL officials said necessary safeguards were taken and the organisation had gone for utmost transparency. Various kinds of agreements like integrity pacts,non-disclosure pacts and confidentiality clauses are part of such agreements, said NACIL spokesperson Jitendra Bhargava. Almost all call centres have interests in airline sector or are handling some airline or the other. InterGlobe has been handling Air India Express since 2005 and no conflict of interest has been noticed, he said. InterGlobe,when contacted,said in an e-mail reply: IGT (InterGlobe Technologies) works with several airlines having domestic and international operations and has been providing services to Air India Express for over 4 years. IGT has been ranked as one of the top 15 exciting emerging companies in India by NASSCOM. IGT supports millions of travel transactions and enables consumers to make travel purchases in a highly secure manner both online and remotely. Singh could not be contacted for comments despite repeated efforts. His personal secretary S D Tripathi also did not respond to the matter. But in his letter,Singh minced no words: If this contract is indeed unfortunately awarded to InterGlobe,the vital,strategic and revenue impacting information of NACIL will now be instantly available to InterGlobe(IndiGo Airline) to a huge disadvantage to NACIL. It is like selling the business of the national carrier NACIL on a platter to a competitor,the only result possible for such an action will be a slow death to our national carrier.
