Praful offers to step down, PM says no

May 23, 2010 - Age Correspondent |

New Delhi/Mangalore

Owning “personal moral responsibility” for the horrific air crash at Mangalore, civil aviation minister Praful Patel on Saturday evening offered to quit during his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Prime Minister is understood to have declined the resignation offer. Mr Patel said that the compensation for the death of passengers would be decided in accordance with the Montreal Convention and could be to the tune of US$1.6 lakh (per passenger) to their kin. Sources said Air India would file the claim with its insurance company. The minister said that till 4 pm, the crucial “black box” (flight data recorder) had not yet been retrieved.
“After overseeing the rescue operation, I have briefed the Prime Minister on all aspects. As head of the civil aviation family, I feel saddened and feel personally and morally responsible that such an accident has taken place. I have conveyed my anguish,” Mr Patel told reporters outside the Prime Minister’s residence.
When asked specifically whether he had offered to resign, Mr Patel said it was not necessary to speak about all the discussions he had with the Prime Minister. “The Prime Minister’s directions are that we should not be overcome by the situation and that we should face it. He said if any mistakes are there, we should correct it.”
Mr Patel said the Prime Minister had told him that not everything is in one’s hands but that one should always try his best in any situation.
The DGCA has already appointed an “inspector of enquiries” to take charge of the wreckage from the crash site for the probe and the civil aviation ministry will initiate a “court of enquiry” soon as well to investigate the matter. Till Saturday evening, all bodies, including those of the pilot and two woman cabin crew members, had been recovered. On the ill-fated aircraft, the civil aviation minister said it was a Boeing 737-800 that had been bought and acquired by Air India just two-and-a-half-years ago (at the end of 2007). He said the aircraft had no history of faults or any technical shortcoming whatsoever.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/14493" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-741ec31dd41fe4e20aa1623ea0d549da" value="form-741ec31dd41fe4e20aa1623ea0d549da" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86657914" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>