Congress president Sonia Gandhi shot another letter to the Union Ministry reminding it that how apathetic approach and political rivalry has affected many key projects in her Parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli or in that of her son Rahul Gandhi in Amethi due to absence of adequate funds. Interestingly, Sonia took the fight with the Government in absence of her son as she was worried that in case major projects shut down it would affect their poll prospect in future.
A fresh letter was written by Sonia to the NDA Government over the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Academy (IGRUA) in Amethi, the parliamentary constituency of her son and Congress vice- president Rahul Gandhi. Earlier, Gandhi had written to the Union Government about delay in the construction of AIIMS in her Rae Bareli constituency.
In a new letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, the Congress president alleged that due to apathetic attitude, the premier flight training institute was turning into a ‘grave’ situation. She has demanded release of subsidy for running IGRUA which was to be released in March 2015 for the last two fiscal. “The academy has not been given subsidy since 2011 and the UPA Government had approved the subsidy till 2013. But unfortunately the funds were not released by the Centre,” she said.
The Rae Bareli MP also raised the issue of an agreement made between a Canadian firm Canadian Aviation Electronics (CAE) in which the foreign company had agreed to make the IGRUA profitable within three-year time. The academy was set up in 1985 by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and now there is a move to hike the pilot training fee beside the training programme had also been affected due to fund crunch.
The Congress president also criticised the Centre for making effort to impose service tax on the trainee pilots besides demanded that the Centre was yet to release Rs30 crore for purchase of a trainee aircraft as nine of the present aircraft are on the verge of expiry of their life. Gandhi also raised the issue of placement of the trainee pilots passed out from the Academy.
“The Government should ensure that Air India and other private airways companies should engage the pilots from this academy and come for campus selection,” she said. “In the past, Air India had promised to engage 50 per cent of the new pilots from the academy but now they are showing no interest,” she said.