UPA has orchestrated crash landing of aviation sector: BJP

New Delhi, Oct.17 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday charged the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government with orchestrating the "crash landing" of the country's aviation sector, and suggested that the present crisis was just the tip of the iceberg, and warned of more disasters coming out of the UPS stable.

Senior party leader and Member of Parliament Rajiv Pratap Rudy told newspersons here today that India's aviation industry is in deep turmoil.

He also described as shameful that a senior Cabinet Minister -- Kapil Sibbal -- was officially on record as saying that the Government had better things to do and that the civil aviation mess was not its responsibility.

"The indifferent, insensitive and callous attitude of the UPA Government is allowing tears to roll down the cheeks of thousands of youngsters. This marks a black day in Indian aviation history. While reinstatement has been effected, their future remains uncertain," Rudy claimed.

He further went on to say that the era of low cost aviation gifted by the previous NDA Government to the country had been slaughtered, killing the industry overnight.

Claiming credit for the BJP for the slew of policy measures initiated in 2003 ranging from bold financial incentives reducing ATF excise duty from 16 to 8 percent, rationalizing landing charges, removing IATT and FTT, launch of low cost airlines, besides others, Rudy said that since 2004,the growth in aviation has devastatingly plummeted to (-) 10 percent this quarter and is likely to round off to a negative annual growth of (-) 16 percent.

He accused the UPA Government of completely forgeting the "Aam Admi" who had aspired for affordable air journeys and thousands of young first generation employees whose future is bleak.

"The Industry, post 2003 has witnessed massive employment with huge expansion of the aviation sector adding up to more than 40,000 direct employee's and thousands of support staff including Pilots and trained engineering and ground manpower. The failure of the government to extend any financial incentive or renewed policy support to the Industry to sustain the phenomenal growth, has resulted in the complete collapse of the civil aviation sector," he concluded.

ANI