Principal Secretary forgets his US visa-stamped passport at home; flight delayed, passengers tie themselves into knots .
Mumbai : After two of his cabinet colleagues, it was the turn of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to fly into a controversy.
An Air India flight (AI 191) from Mumbai to New York with 250 passengers on board was delayed for 88 minutes just because an aide of Fadnavis – Principal Secretary Praveen Pardeshi – forgot to carry the passport that was stamped with the US visa.
Nonetheless, he waded through the layers of security at the Chattrapati Shivaji International airport and cleared both check-in and immigration without being stopped.
According a senior Air India official, a protocol officer expedited both the formalities for Pardeshi, who did not have to personally visit each counter owing to his VIP status.
Finally, he was stopped at the aero bridge by security personnel and checked by the fraud prevention team: they discovered to their surprise that Pardeshi did not have a proper passport with the US visa stamp.
The bureaucrat called up his home and asked his servant to ferry the passport. The VIP errand took some 30 minutes and all this while the passengers on board kept tying themselves into knots.
As per DGCAs rules the flight should have been cancelled and fresh permission sought for flying, but senior Air India officials convinced the regulator that the chief minister’s team must be facilitated since it was on an official visit.
Incidentally, Fadnavis was the first to get onto the flight, much before the other passengers began boarding. “The chief minister requested that he would not like to be in the lounge area and was allowed to board on priority. Pardeshi came much later,” an airline official said.
Pardeshi was accompanying the chief minister on a week-long official trip to the US. According to Air India officials, the delegation also included Industries Minister Subhash Desai. There were eight bureaucrats on the flight.
This is not the first time Fadnavis has sparked a row owing to his VVIP status. In March, traffic policemen at the NSCI Club in Worli area had stopped private vehicles to make way for the Chief Minister’s convoy. The scuffle that ensued on the road had triggered an outrage over common man being inconvenienced by movement of VVIPs.
Fadnavis had then apologised, saying, “My sincere apologies to those who were stopped by the police unnecessarily. I don’t believe in VIP culture.” Apparently, he has a short memory.
