New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has closed a corruption case involving Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar faction) leader Praful Patel registered in May 2017.
The CBI, acting on the orders of the Supreme Court, had registered a case against Patel and several officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Air India over allegations of irregularities in the leasing aircraft for Air India.
After investigating the case for around seven years, the CBI has now closed the investigation, giving a clean chit to Praful Patel and the then officials of MoCA and Air India, sources said. The closure report has been filed before the competent court in March 2024.
The NCP split on July 2, 2023, after Ajit Pawar parted company with party leader Sharad Pawar and joined hands with the BJP. Praful Patel was part of the Ajit Pawar faction.
Three days later, on July 5, 2023, Patel, who had been appointed NCP working president by Sharad Pawar a month earlier, mocked the opposition’s efforts to take on the BJP. “I went to the joint opposition meeting in Patna with Pawar Saheb [in June 2023] and I felt like laughing when I saw the scene there. There were 17 Opposition parties there, seven of them have only 1 MP in the Lok Sabha and one party has no MP at all,” Patel, a former civil aviation minister in the Congress-led UPA government, was reported as having said mockingly.
On February 15,2024 the Pawar faction said it would field Patel for the Rajya Sabha elections.
In 2017, the CBI had alleged Patel abused his position as minister of civil aviation in the Manmohan Sngh government to lease a large number of aircraft for Air India – then a state-owned company – in conspiracy with officials of MoCA, Air India and private parties
It further alleged that the aircraft were leased even when an aircraft acquisition programme was going on for Air India.
National Aviation Corporation of India Ltd (NACIL), a public sector undertaking, was formed after the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines.
The CBI in its May 2017 FIR had alleged, “leasing of aircraft for Air India was done by the public servants of MoCA and NACIL despite the airlines running with very low load because of large scale aircraft acquisition and several flights, especially overseas flights running almost empty at huge loss.”
During investigation it was further revealed that the “lease agreements were adopted for acquiring aircraft on lease which did not have an early termination clause, so NACIL was unable to terminate the lease agreements since doing so would have resulted in NACIL paying all costs and lease rental differentials.”
Even the Parliamentary Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture in its report dated January 21, 2010 and Committee on Public Undertakings in its report dated March 12, 2010 had come down heavily on MoCA for continued leasing and renewal of lease agreements of aircraft even after the new aircraft were delivered to Air India.
Shockingly, the investigation also had revealed “15 expensive aircraft were leased for Air India for which they did not even had pilots ready, which resulted in huge loss to the company”.
CBI’s FIR had also alleged “Air India with a view to benefit private parties dry leased four Boeing 777s for a period of five years in 2006, whereas Air India was to get the delivery of its own aircraft from July 2007 onwards. As a result, five Boeing 777s and five Boeing 737s were kept idle on ground at an estimated loss of 840 crore between 2007-09”.
