Amendment to act to deal with hoax callers under inter-ministerial consultation: Union Civil Aviation Minister

Hyderabad: The proposed Amendments to the 'Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation Act 1982' is currently going through the inter ministerial consultation process and the feedback is being collected, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Wednesday.

The minister also said the Ministry of Civil Aviation is also in the process of creating a “Centralised Data Repository” by collecting all the data from facilities such as DIGI Yatra and integrating them to be used for any policy decisions.

“The second one (of the amendments to two civil aviation laws) is that we are having a SUASCA Act Which deals with the offences related to civil aviation. We have proposed a small amendment. It is going through the inter ministerial consultation process. We are getting feedback from all the ministries concerned.

We are trying to push it as soon as possible, but because it is a very important legislation, all the ministries have to give their opinion. We are still waiting for that,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a programme.

After numerous hoax bomb threats, causing hardships to the passengers and several flights in October and November the centre proposed amendments to SUASCA, 1982 whereby the perpetrators could be arrested and a probe can be initiated without a court order for offences when an aircraft is on the ground.

The civil aviation minister said once the amendment to the Aircraft Security Rules is published in the Gazette, the hoax call perpetrators will be put under no-fly list.

He further said The Civil Aviation Ministry is expecting the number of aircraft in India to go up to 2300 from the existing 800 and encouraging more Flying Training Organisations (FTO) to be set up to meet the growing demand of pilots. Earlier addressing the gathering after the inauguration of Airport Predictive Operation Centre (APOC) at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport here, Naidu said passenger traffic in India is ever growing reaching new heights.

Giving the data, he said Indian airports registered a 5.3 per cent growth in October this year at 1.36 crore domestic passengers compared to 1.26 crore during the same month last year.

With five lakh domestic air passengers, November 17 will be remembered in the history of Indian aviation. The Minister said the number of airports in the country grew to 158 from 74 in 2014.

Inputs from PTI