The Parliamentary Committee on Public Undertakings (COPU) has asked the Ministry of Civil Aviation for a paragraph-by-paragraph response to the CAG report on the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines. Jagdambika Pal,chairman of COPU and a senior Congress member of the Lok Sabha,who presided a meeting of the panel,conveyed the decision to the Civil Aviation secretary Nasim Zaidi,who appeared before the committee. He observed that it was no use going in to the Action Taken Report (ATR) of the ministry on the COPU report on the matter released by previous chairman of the panel V Kishore Chandra Deo in March last year now that the CAG report was in. The COPU report had described the merger as a marriage between incompatible individuals. The merger,according to the report by Deo,had increased losses and put the carriers at a disadvantage. Both suffered a loss of brand value and lost traffic to private carriers. The report had called for action against agencies and individuals responsible for the whimsical decision. The meeting had been called to seek clarifications from the ministry on the updated ATR replies. The committee,according to the sources,welcomed the change of guard in the national carrier. The sources said members of the committee,particularly Tapan Kumar Sen (CPI-M),NK Singh (Janata Dal-U) and Bharatkumar Rau (Shiv Sena),criticised the ministrys response to the COPU report. They felt that it was evasive and unsatisfactory. They pointed out that all critical observations made in the COPU report had been vindicated by the CAG report. Sen had reportedly also written a letter to Pal alleging that the ministry was in a denial mode vis-a-vis the fall-out of the merger. Demanding a probe by an appropriate agency to find out the loss caused to the national carriers due to the merger,he had requested him to refer the matter to the CVC.
