SP govt obsessed with air crafts, on shopping spree again

Lucknow: The air fleet of Uttar Pradesh government is much bigger than the fleet of other states but the previous Mayawati government and the present Akhilesh government seem to be on shopping spree all the time.

It is hardly a year ago when the state government had bought an aircraft but now again, a team of officers is scheduled to visist Singapor Air Show to do some more purchase on behest of the chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Such was the splurge on air fleet that the present regime had been trying to sell off aircrafts bought by the previous Mayawati regime but no buyer came forward.

Chopper sold at throw-away price:

A bell chopper which was bought with several crores of rupees was sold at a very meagre cost of Rs 4.95 crores.

Mayawati bought the aircraft Hawker 900 xp:

Former UP Chief Minister Mayawati bought the Beechcraft Premier 1A Jet and Hawker 900XP to fulfil her own desire. This expenditure looked like going waste as the air strips are not suitable for such aircrafts hence Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had decided to dispose off these air crafts.

Biggest Air fleet in the country:

UP can boast of having the largest air fleet. According to the gleaned information, governments of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan have 4-5 air crafts in their fleet while there are eight aircraft in Uttar Pradesh ..

UP CM’s airfleet:

The UP CM air fleet includes Beechcraft premier 1A, Super King Air B 200, King Air 300 LW, King Air C 90, Bonanza Single Engine plane, Chetak Helicopter, Bell 412 and Hawker 900 XP

One Bell-230 Helicopter has been sold while Beechcraft Premiere-1A jet and a Chopper are yet to be sold.

Mulayam also planned to buy jet:

Sources here said that Samajwadi Party(SP) Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had also planned to buy a jet during his regime but former Chief Minister Mayawati who came to power in 2007 changed every decision of Mulayam’s government except this one.

Maywati was not happy with the jet:

The then Chief Minister Mayawati, though bought the aircraft but she was not at all happy with it size. She wanted a big aircraft hence Hawker 900 XP was bought for Rs 70 crores as her personal choice at the cost of state exchequer, it is said.