Air India issues gag order, threatens employees of police action
The letter signed by the CMD Air India Rohit Nandan states that the national carrier could also register a FIR against the employees found leaking information regarding functional, operational and financial health of the airline.
Leave aside the prospects of Air India gaining operating profit by 2015-2016; the airline is again in the news for all the wrong reasons. The much talked about relations between the management and the employees have now soured to such an extent that the employees have been threatened of police action by the management if information regarding the health of the airline is leaked to an outsider.
The national carrier has now issued a gag order. The letter signed by the CMD Air India Rohit Nandan states that the national carrier could also register a FIR against the employees found leaking information regarding functional, operational and financial health of the airline.
Headlines Today is in the exclusive possession of this letter. The contents of this letter running into four paragraphs also bring out how there has been sensitive information leak from within the Civil Aviation Ministry and Air India by the ministry officials themselves in the recent past. The letter also reveals that the CVO has raised serious objections to the leakages. The letter also states that the CBI has been closely looking at these leakages and that officials have also been quizzed in this regard.
With a staggering debt of more than Rs.40 thousand crore the airline has been surviving through government oxygen from quite some time now. Headlines Today broke the story on how the PMO had just recently asked tough questions on the financial viability of the airline. At such a critical juncture when the airline faces cut throat competition in the skies this letter has obviously angered the employees.
An Air India employee in the knowhow of the affairs of the airline on condition of anonymity says that the gag order has been issued to stop the employees from exposing the scams and irregularities within the airline. Air India on its part says that after the corporate espionage episode they have coordinated with various agencies to protect the interest of the airline and hence the letter has been issued.
Pankaj.upadhyay@aajtak.com
Twitter: @pankajaajtak