Delhi airport row escalates as Parliamentary panel seeks meeting with aviation ministry and AAI
17 May 2008
New Delhi: The sudden flare up between Planning Commission deputy chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, and civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, over the state of the ongoing modernisation work being carried out at New Delhi's IGI airport broadened further, with the parliamentary panel on transport, tourism and culture, headed by Left party luminary, Sitaram Yechury, issuing summons to the civil aviation ministry and Airports Authority of India (AAI) for a meeting.
It has said that it would like to examine ''issues'' related to IGI's modernisation with them..
It may be recalled that Ahluwalia, on a private visit to the airport to see off a passenger, found himself inconvenienced by the services offered by the airport management. This compelled him to fire a broadside at the GMR Group-led DIAL consortium over the state of affairs at the airport.
This, in turn, invited the ire of the minister for civil aviation, Praful Patel, who in a letter to Ahluwalia, suggested that the Planning Commission may itself have been responsible for delays at other airports, such as those of Kolkata and Chennai.
For the moment, the unforeseen row between Ahluwalia and Patel continues to escalate.