New Delhi: Half the positions at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation – the country's aviation watchdog – are vacant, the government has revealed in a Lok Sabha response.

Minister of State in the Ministry of civil aviation, Murlidhar Mohol's numbers show that most of the vacancies in the DGCA are among Group A staff. There are 823 vacancies in the directorate at the moment, out of 1644 positions – a neat 50%.

The Airport Authority of India, which has 9,477 vacancies out of 25,730 posts – over 36% – is missing 6,484 Group C employees.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, on the other hand, is in want of 230 people to fill all 598 sanctioned posts – showing 38% vacanies.

The government said that in the DGCA, 441 posts including 426 technical ones, have been created between 2022 and 2024. In BCAS, 84 operational Posts have been created during restructuring in 2024. In the Airports Authority of India, 840 posts of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) have been created recently.

India's aviation sector is under a cloud since the June 12 plane crash of an Air India flight carrying 242 people, in Ahmedabad. A total of 260, including passengers, crew and those on the ground, died.

A parliamentary standing committee report tabled in parliament in March this year had raised “serious” concern over the high number of vacancies across key aviation regulatory and operational bodies, particularly in the DGCA, BCAS and AAI.

The committee had been informed by the aviation ministry through a written response that in the DGCA 879 of the total 1633 posts were vacant. The BCAS had 208 of the total 598 posts vacant, while the AAI had 3,265 vacancies of the total 19,269 sanctioned posts.

Mohol gave these figures to questions by Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation Karakat MP Raja Ram Singh and Congress' Attingal MP Adoor Prakash.

Singh and Prakash had asked the government whether it acknowledges that over 53% of sanctioned posts in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), 35% in the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and 17% in the Airports Authority of India (AAI) remain vacant, along with details of current staffing gaps.

The government's response claimed additional posts have been created in DGCA, BCAS and AAI in last couple of years.

The MPs had also asked whether the staffing gaps in these institutions have contributed to recent aviation accidents including the helicopter crashes in Uttarakhand and the Air India crash in Gujarat. They had wanted to know details of specific measures taken by the government to fill the sanctioned posts, enhance safety oversight and fix accountability for recent safety lapses.

The government in response claimed that the shortfall has not impacted the functioning of these organisations.

"Further, all methods of recruitment are pursued vigorously in order to ensure timely and continuous availability of requisite manpower. To meet requirements in the interregnum due to vacancies arising from reasons like inadequate response to advertisements, non-joining of selected candidates, persons with insufficient service in the feeder cadre for promotion, insufficient response to deputation posts,
efforts are made to recruit persons through short terms contractual hiring," it said.

The MPs asked whether the government proposes to initiate an audit of aviation safety protocols especially among private and non-scheduled aviation operators; and if so, the timelines fixed for such an audit and if not, the reasons for no action having been taken in this regard.

To this, the government did not provide a direct answer, but instead said that the DGCA has a comprehensive and structured civil aviation regulations for safe operation of aircraft and its maintenance. These regulations are continuously updated and aligned with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)/European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) standards.

It also said, "DGCA also has a structured surveillance and audit framework in place i.e. planned and unplanned surveillance of organization/aircraft, which includes regular and periodic audits, spot checks, night surveillance and ramp inspections across all operators, including continuous oversight of maintenance practices."

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