Union Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu has moved a bill to replace the 90-year-old Aircraft Act for Rajya Sabha passage. The bill, Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak, 2024, was passed in the Lok Sabha in August 2021. Naidu said the bill was taken up after ICAO suggested amending the principal act.
“We have organized everything in the bill which provides different section for powers of bodies like DGCA. So there is clear demarcation and indication on which each body has to do as recommended by ICAO,” he stated.
Naidu mentioned that the aviation sector has the potential to drive the economy and should be expanded. He informed the House that the number of airports has increased from 74 in 2014 to 157 in the country and the fleet size has also doubled from 400 (aircraft) in 2014 to 813.
“In the earlier Act, only the world maintenance was mentioned. There was no definition. Now we adding design and manufacturing also. We are also defining all these three terms (in the new law). We have brought the appeal system,” he stated.
The minister explained that most of the times, we amend rules of the Act with backing of the principal act and that is why we are amending the principal act.
“We are giving strong legal backing to the rules under the Act,” he stressed. He also stated that today everybody wants to have an airport in their district.
“We want to cater to those dreams. We want to build those airports. We feel that if we cannot do it today, it will be a challenge tomorrow. The land is going to be scarce,” he added.
The Bill seeks to resolve existing anomalies between various aviation laws and ensure a coherent regulatory environment with well-defined chapters and clauses.
He said that naming the bill in Hindi is an exclusionary trend as it is difficult for non-Hindi-speaking people to comprehend.
He asked about the autonomy the agencies would have in the civil aviation sector.
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Source: The Indian Express
