Inter-ministry turf war grounds para-military pilots

Four Central Paramilitary Police Forces (CAPF) pilots are sitting idle, doing clerical work, and 10 more are expected to meet the same fate soon, thanks to lack of vision of the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA) and turf war with the defence ministry and Pawan Hans.

The 10 pilots are expected to sit idle because they are currently under training at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for Scheweizer helicopters which are not used by the Border Security Force that operates MHA’s air wing.

Poor planning continues to dog MHA’s air wing, which is already suffering from heavy dearth of pilots, that it needs to fly choppers in the Naxal affected areas and far flung regions of the northeast.

To get over the pilot crunch, after the defence ministry showed its inability to lend pilots, the MHA in 2008-09 had floated a scheme to train its own pilots by recruiting assistant and deputy commandant level officers from the central paramilitary forces.

It spent over Rs 1crore on the training of each of the five pilots but it proved futile as all of them were trained to fly Chetak which is no more in service in the BSF’s air wing. The lone Chetak it had, crashed at Mount Abu killing a CPMF pilot on May 13 this year.
The seven ALH-Dhruv choppers (six after Ranchi crash) that BSF operates are maintained and flown by Pawan Hans crew while six MI-17 and one Cheetah helicopters that BSF operates are flown and maintained by the Indian Air Force.

Sources in the MHA’s air wing said their requests to convert Chetak pilots into ALH - Dhruv pilots have been refused twice by the Pawan Hans ostensibly to keep its monopoly.

“We are afraid that the 10 pilots whose training will be over soon will also meet the same fate as neither Pawan Hans nor the defence ministry seem to be interested in training and upgrading our pilots,” a senior MHA source said.

Incidentally, the MHA also has an agreement with defence ministry, according to which it is supposed to train CPMF pilots for MI series A reminder sent to the defence ministry a couple of months ago to train two CPMF pilots again met the same fate.

The defence ministry refused citing lack of trainers and facilities as the reason and the pilots continue to remain grounded, sources added.