Letters: Still a long way to go

With reference to the news report, "Reforms take wing" (June 16) by Aneesh Phadnis and Arindam Majumder, the new Civil Aviation Policy aims to open doors to provide better regional connectivity within the country apart from enabling new airlines to fly abroad by amending the 5/20 rule with the 0/20 rule.

This could be seen as a victory for the Tata Group over the Federation of Indian Airlines, which has been opposing the government's proposal to amend the 5/20 rule. The government seems to have buckled under pressure from the Tatas in the guise of an ambitious "open skies policy".

It would not be surprising if Vistara Airlines, a joint venture between the Tata Group and Singapore Airlines (with a fleet of 11 aircraft), and AirAsia India, a joint venture between the Tata Group and Malaysia's AirAsia (with a fleet of six aircraft), are soon permitted by the government to fly abroad even without complying with the revised requirement of having a fleet of 20 aircraft or 20 per cent of total capacity in India in the "extended" version of the civil aviation reforms.

However, considering the reactions of the chief executives of both Vistara Airlines and AirAsia India post the policy announcement, there are enough reasons to believe that the ground is being prepared for scrapping even the revised 0/20 rule.

On the issue of providing regional connectivity, the government has offered a bounty of tax sops, viability gap funding and instituted a fare cap of Rs 2,500 for one-hour flights, along with plans to revive unused airstrips and develop no-frills airports.

The government proposes to provide viability gap funding (to be shared between the Ministry of Civil Aviation and state governments) through a small levy per departure on domestic routes -other than Category II and IIA routes, Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) routes and small aircraft - at a rate decided by the ministry from time to time. But why does the government intend to "rob Peter to pay Paul" while in its effort to provide viability gap funding under this scheme?

S Kumar, New Delhi

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