AAI makes a U-turn on vacancies

New Delhi: The Ministry of Civil Aviation has criticised the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for holding up appointments to the post of air traffic controllers (ATCs) “for no valid reasons”. The ministry has also asked the latter to issue appointment letters to fill the originally declared vacancies.
The directive came on Tuesday during a meeting held on the subject of staff recruitment under the chairmanship of ministry’s joint secretary Alok Sinha.
As reported by HT in April, the AAI had in March declared a curtailed list of 35 candidates selected for the post of ATCs or ATMs as against the earlier one, comprising 68 candidates.
The earlier list was declared and withdrawn in December last year. The withdrawal led to Right to Information Act queries by several candidates. In response, the AAI had stated: “It has been decided by the competent authority to reduce the intake of officers to the extent of 50 per cent.”
According to the minutes of meeting — HT has a copy of it — called to firm up the recruitment action plan for air traffic managers (ATM) and communication navigation surveillances (CNS), there are 515 vacancies at various levels in the ATM (also called ATCs) category.
16/06/10 Nivedita Khandekar/Hindustan Times