Air India promoting staff in brazen violation of norms, Bombay HC order

It's raining promotions in loss-making Air India (AI) just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in brazen violation of norms and a Bombay High Court (HC) order restricting promotions.

In an unprecedented move, the management of the bleeding Maharaja announced a phenomenal 203 promotions last month even as it is supposed to curtail the salary bill for a turnaround.

In February, the airline promoted as many as 126 senior managers to assistant general managers (AGM), 24 AGMs to DGM, 23 managers to senior managers and 30 deputy managers to managers.

Civil aviation minister Ajit Singh refused to comment.

2003 employees promoted last month
Official documents accessed by Mail Today reveal that many of these promotions were based on proforma, which means that the executives were actually not due for promotion but promoted merely because their juniors had superseded them.

The airline management has brazenly violated the norms for the sanctioned strength of 28 DGMs and gone ahead to appoint as many as 59 officials to this post. This is more than twice the sanctioned number for this grade. Similarly, 1,056 deputy managers and managers have been appointed while the sanctioned posts for these ranks is only 568.

Interestingly, the list of 59 deputy GMs who are in the race for promotion for the post of

GM is currently stuck as the airline has to select only eight of them based on seniority. However, the eight who qualify are from erstwhile Indian Airlines.

Many of these DGMs from AI who are being left out are up in arms and have questioned the management of promoting executives at a time when the HC on January 27 refused to stay the implementation of the Justice (retired) DM Dharmadhikari Committee report. The airline on February 10 issued an order banning all promotions but made a self- interpretation of the HC order a few days later to come out with a list promoting 24 senior managers as DGMs. AI executive director Deepa Mahajan told Mail Today that the court order had put a stay on promotions of workmen and not executives.

But many AI officials refused to buy the management's argument.

"When the court has already put a stay on implementation of Dharmadhikari report and we don't yet have a proper integration in place, how can the airline shower promotions. The airline just cannot afford to pay more for salary bills," said a top AI executive.

Courtesy: Mail Today