In what is likely to bring relief to aspiring pilots and other aviation personnel, the Civil Aviation Ministry has proposed in the new Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak, 2024 to bring the examination used to test the use of radio communication equipment on air- craft within the ambit of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The Bill, which seeks to replace the the Aircraft Act of 1934, was tabled in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
It was tabled by Civil Aviation Minister K. Rammohan Naidu amid protest by Kerala MP N.K. Prema- chandran, who questioned why the name of the statute was in Hindi alone. He said the Constitution man- dated that Bills brought to Parliament should be in English.
"For people from South India, it is very difficult to even pronounce Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak. What is the logical reason behind this? I am questioning the legislative competence of the Bill," the MP said.
The Statement of Objects and Reasons states that the Bill is being introduced because the 90- year-old Aircraft Act has been amended several It intends to bring radio telephone
operator restricted certificate test within the DGCA ambit and times and "a need is felt to address the ambiguities confusion experienced by the stakeholders, to remove redundancies, to enable ease of doing business and to pro- vide for manufacture and maintenance in the aviation sector".
The proposed legislation will bring the radio telephone operator restrict- ed (RTR) certificate and licence from the Department of Telecom to the DGCA, and ease the pro- cess for pilots as they can secure all their certificates from one authority, a senior official of the Civil Aviation Ministry said. The exam is also conducted for aircraft maintenance engineers and flight dispatchers.
It is an open secret in the industry that the RTR exam is the toughest to crack due to allegedly widespread corruption.
Aspiring pilots said that if the proposal came through, they would be able to appear for the RTR exam in any of the DGCA's 14 exam centres.
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